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.

T

TerryLn22Author

Inspiring

Does the lab give you instructions about what profile to provide the images in?

To the best of my knowledge, what Proof Colors buys you is a direct interpretation of the RGB values in your image as though it's already in the profile you've selected for proofing. In other words, the lab isn't expected to interpret the RGB values using any color profile you provide, but rather just print the image in their color profile as though you've already converted it.

Does your lab provide detailed instructions for how to prep the images? Specifically, do they say to provide the images in their own profile?

It seems to me that, if I've gotten things right about what your lab needs, then you can accomplish what you want by converting your images to the lab's profile (Edit - Convert To Profile) in Photoshop, then edit them with Proof Colors turned off. This will correctly interpret the document colors for display on your monitor, and should leave the images all prepped perfectly for print on their system.

Do you see any holes in this logic?

-Noel

I could do the convert to file, (or Assign Profile do the same thing?) by inserting the lab's profiles. No problems with that logic. I guess then I could view the photos and tweak them as I see fit on my screen, and simply have the 'Convert To' profile convert them all. That might be the way to do it.

Of course, all the images I output are for prints, in fact, very few. So the flip side, if everything is set to Convert To profile, then I have to remember to turn it off, as it would be "on" all the time. If the "Proof Colors" were on until I manually turned it off, it'd be more 'accessible'. I think of changing the profiles, almost like the "Preferences" tab; you sort of have to dig for it. But oh well.

Thanks.