What is "Proof Colors" option for?

Forum|Forum|14 years ago
July 15, 2011
2 replies
66581 views

In PS CS4, under View, there's Proof Setup, which allows you to view soft proofing, so you can set it for your lab's profiles, so you know about how it will be printed.

However, underneath Proof Setup, is "Proof Colors". What is that for? It's only off/on, no other settings for that. It can't be, that the Proof Setup is turning the "Proof Colors" on or off so you can see how the lab will print it, because the colors change whether "Proof Colors" is checked or not. However, when it's UNCHECKED, and I go into change a potential Proof Colors choice (say from my lab's profile to Nikon's profile), the color of the photo changes, and the Proof Color now has a check in front of it.

So....what's that for, and how do you work that?

Noel Carboni

Legend

It allows you to simulate what your image would look like if interpreted directly in the color space you set, rather than transformed using its profile and a device's profile. It can also provide you a preview of CMYK color separations.

View - Proof Setup sets the profile you want to simulate or "test" with, and checking Proof Colors enables the "test", overriding normal display color management. Proof Colors is automatically checked (enabled) when you set a profile in Proof Setup as a convenience feature.

You would normally want to use Photoshop with Proof Colors UNchecked, so that the colors ARE automatically transformed to those needed by your monitor per its profile. This helps ensure that you'll see them accurately.

Photoshop's Help facility has some additional detail for this.

-Noel

T

TerryLn22Author

Inspiring

Well this is truly annoying. When Proof Colors is checked, I think I'm good to go. Then a few photos and 1 hour later, I find out it's turned itself off, and I have to redo all the work. You have to remember to turn it on for each and every photo. That's ridiculous.

Is there some way to lock it in on or off position? I don't see a way to do that.

Noel Carboni

Legend

Noel,

The reason I wanted Proof Colors checked manually, is because if I am working on a particular job where my customers want prints, then I pull up the needed images, let's say an order of 10 photos, and I'm sending all those to the lab. Proof colors should be like a light switch. When you want the light on, you turn it on. You don't want it to turn off automatically just because it wants to. I was working on 10 photos, checked it to come on, then found out later, you have to manually turn it on, for each photo. Even after I knew that, I made mistakes. It's just normal that you look at a photo, know what you need to do it, be that cropping, brightening, darkening, adding contrast, etc., and so you do those things. Then you find out 15 minutes later after you've made all your corrections, that .... the proof color was off, and you have to redo everything, all over again.

They should just have it so you turn it on, and it's on, until you turn it off.

All this, of course, is because it's anticipated that "Proof Colors" is a transient setting, that you will enable only for brief periods to check how things look under certain output conditions - which is why I questioned your need to use it long-term.

Just to clarify, you are using Proof Colors to optimize the color of your document for particular output conditions on a non-color-managed system, right?

It doesn't sound like anything in particular is wrong with that, if in fact that's what you're targeting, though it isn't really the approach most take...

Most people with the need for very careful color control take the approach of getting the colors good in a more or less "absolute" sense (e.g., by using normal color management on a calibrated/profiled display), convert profiles as needed, and maybe tweak it a bit at the end for particular output conditions.

Rather than try to edit with Proof Colors enabled, have you considered converting to the output profile before providing the images?

Are you willing to go into, a little deeper, how different "normal color-managed" output is from the specific output conditions you're facing? I'm not completely sure I understand all the constraints you have.

I'm not trying to be critical of you at all here - I'm just curious about your workflow, and would like to see perhaps we can find a less frustrating alternative where you are doing things in a more typical fashion and the system doesn't fight you.

-Noel