Softproofing: monitor vs Lightroom

Question

I have a hardware calibrated monitor, with two custom buttons to change calibration profile, both calibrated by me : one in sRGB colorspace and one in Native colorspace. I have already verified that when I switch from sRGB to Native profile on the monitor and vice versa, also in Windows the corresponding profile is loaded correctly.

I do the editing with the monitor in Native.

To check how the image looks on "a generic sRGB monitor" (I know I can't control where people look at my photos, but I still like to have with an idea of how it look in sRGB), I have two options:

1. Use LrC's soft proofing functionality, using for the target photo the sRGB profile generated when I calibrated the monitor.

2. Simply set monitor to sRGB.custom profile.

I noticed that with option 1 the difference between Native and sRGB (which in this case are side by side, with LrC simulating sRGB for the target photo) is limited: if there are large areas of red/green/blues more or less uniform, you notice that on the target photo the area is a little less saturated, but in a normal photo the differences are almost imperceptible.

However, with option 2, with the entire monitor in sRGB, the difference is more substantial.

D Fosse · Answer

@Giovanni Stoto

Yes, this is the key to the whole thing:

You need to relaunch Lightroom when you change the monitor profile in the operating system. The monitor profile is loaded by the application at startup. It loads whatever profile it gets from the operating system, and this profile is used for the remainder of the session. This is how all color managed applications work.

I get the feeling you don't fully realize the difference between calibration and monitor profile. What you're talking about in your post is only the calibration, not the profile.

The monitor profile has one single purpose: to describe the monitor's behavior in its current state. It's a standard icc profile, just like any other icc profile.

For every calibration target you make, there is a corresponding monitor profile describing that particular state of the monitor. These two go together. When the monitor's behavior changes, you need to load the corresponding monitor profile; the one describing that behavior.

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Calibration alone has limited precision. The profile has much higher precision, and it uses many more parameters. Furthermore, it's what allows using many different working color spaces. If it wasn't for the monitor profile, we'd all have to work in sRGB. Wide gamut monitors wouldn't be possible.

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