Soft Proof Copy Printing

[bobbyizq]

Creating a soft proof and resolving out-of-gamut colors using a targeted saturation adjustment to remove the gamut warning makes a global adjustment to the photo, which I prefer not to do. Should I make this adjustment and print the proof copy, or should I not make the adjustment and print the proof copy and let the LrC Print Module fix the out-of-gamut colors by using the Perceptual Intent? In other words, is print job intent being done locally, only affecting the out-of-gamut colors, which is better than a global color saturation adjustment?

[JohanElzenga]

The idea of saving a soft proof copy is that you can make adjustments exactly the way you like it. You could even use masks. These adjustment will only apply to that copy, and so you print that copy. Perceptual changes more than just the out of gamut colors, so that the out of gamut colors are placed within the printer gamut without clipping. That is often fine for photos, but it sounds like that is not what you want.

[bobbyizq]

What I would like to know is how the Perceptual and Relative Intent function works when it moves out-of-gamut colors within the target gamut. Does it affect all colors or just the out-of-gamut colors? Does it do a better job of moving colors within the target gamut than I'm doing manually using a soft proof copy and bringing colors within the gamut using color mixing adjustments?

[JohanElzenga]

Read this (Lightroom Classic only has perceptual and relative colorimetric of course): 

https://www.permajet.com/blog/rendering-intents-explained/

[Conrad_C]

Note that you might not always have to remove the gamut warning completely. In some cases, it means important color detail got smashed and looks flat in the print gamut, and yes, that is a reason to try and fix it. But in other areas, the out-of-gamut colors may not carry any important detail (such as a flat blue sky or solid red area of a road sign); doing the work to bring those into the print gamut might not be worth it and so those areas can just be printed as they are.

In other words, the gamut warning itself is only a “hey, you might want to look at this area” indicator, and is less important than how an out-of-gamut color actually looks in the soft proof view. The next step after noticing a gamut warning is to look at those areas and see if there is actually a problem. If it looks fine, it’s OK to leave it alone and save some time.

Creating a soft proof and resolving out-of-gamut colors using a targeted saturation adjustment to remove the gamut warning makes a global adjustment to the photo, which I prefer not to do.

By @bobbyizq

If you are talking about the Saturation option in the Mixer section of the Color Mixer panel, that is not your only option. Adjusting Saturation in the recently added Point Color adjustment in the Color Mixer is much more precise and is sometimes enough, but it also affects the entire image.

If you want to restrict a saturation edit to specific areas, you can use masked adjustments. On the selection side, you can target what gets changed spatially (for example, by creating an object or brush mask), by range (e.g., Color Range), or both if you use Intersect. Within that mask, you can then adjust Saturation or Point Color. So it’s possible to do edits for “I want to reduce red saturation, but only on that area there” or “only on that flower” or “only the shadow areas of the red parts of that flower.” Or even “only the most saturated reds on the right side of that flower.” Just set up the mask for the edit you want.