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

Convert to Profile and Assign Profile are completely different functions.

Convert to Profile changes the RGB values and replaces the existing profile to best represent what you're seeing, but using a different profile. You would not expect to see a visible difference on the screen with this operation, because both before and after the conversion the colors are being interpreted per the respective profiles into an image that looks essentially the same.

Assign Profile is for replacing an existing profile without any RGB value changes, because somehow the RGB values already represent proper colors in the new profile. This would be used in the case of some error in a prior process, and would cause a large difference in the way the image would look. This is essentially what you're doing temporarily when you set Proof Colors, but it is NOT what you want to do in a normal workflow.

Neither of these things is something to "set", but are activities that are invoked once and done. I assume you'd Convert to Profile right before generating an image to be printed by the lab, and perhaps not do it when you're publishing for other uses.

Based on your responses, and that you continue to think you want to use Proof Colors, I really think you might want to take some time and brush up on how color management really works - to get your head around it. It's not something that's easy to get right if you have misconceptions about how things work, and understanding it can make the difference between getting what you expect the first time or having to throw away prints and reorder.

-Noel

It is nearly illegal to learn color management. Books and especially any Adobe "Help" topics (more like anti-help trying to look up answers to questions), nearly by law, have to be difficult to learn. Adobe's Help topics, try to teach you this stuff, piece meal. Nobody can learn like that; it'd take 12 years to read through all the stuff.

The best I've seen, by light years, is Will Crockett's videos, on Monitor to Print match series. In about 5 minutes, you have a pretty good handle on it. However, one thing he completely misses, (not that that learning segment was supposed to cover this), is Adobe Photoshop's color management settings, what they mean, and how they work. That's why I get confused on the Assign Profile, Convert to Profile, Color Profile, ICC profile settings, etc. All confusing, unless someone spells it out for me. Yes, I could read a book, and 3 weeks later, I'd have the answer. Anything I've seen written thus far, again as if by law, has to be really, really difficult, to help make the author look smart, not to teach the student.

I wish someone would do a short video on all the Photoshop color management settings, which would include setting Proof Colors, checking or unchecking the Proof Colors toggle switch we discussed earlier, Assigning profiles, Convert to Profiles, monitor settings, settings for color spaces, dot gain, gray settings, the whole works. Then I would KNOW the answers, not be GUESSING at the answers.

Thanks.