Photoshop Soft Proof does not match Print Preview

[ChrisOgden]

Photoshop Soft Proof does not match Print Preview

Spent 2.5hrs on phone with Adobe tech support and they are stumped.

Does anyone from this knowledgable community know how photoshop renders the Print Preview (with Match Print Colors on) vs. showing the image with Soft Proofing turned on?

I'm struggling with _significant_ luminance and hue differences between the two. Unfortunately, the actual prints closely match the print preview (which was extremely dark, with crazy blue sky saturation), rather than the soft proofed image.


Is this a known Photoshop issue which I'm encountering in an exacerbated with this particular image which is very dark/contrasty?


The lack of matching makes Soft Proofing a total hit/miss exercise (frustrating, time consuming, wasteful of materials): Get it right on screen/soft proof. Print and find results way off. Go back to print preview and sigh to see it displaying very much what printed. Back to soft proof to add brightness and reduce sky saturation. Open print preview and sigh. Rinse. Repeat. Shooting in the dark!

I even tried an adjustment layer adding 100 points (!) of brightness. Makes Soft Proof radically brighter in dark foreground, but Preview only a teeny bit brighter.

With tech support, we wiped Photoshop user prefs, created a new user account, even logged into another boot partition. We recalibrated the monitor (again) with SpectraView II. While each permutation yielded slightly different results (bt. soft proof and print preview), they always differed from one another.

The support guy even set the monitor profile to sRGB. Wow! it really shows a difference bt. the two: the soft proof image went crazy cyan in sky, the print preview does not. This would seem to indicate that Soft Proof is much more affected by the display profile than print preview.

Shouldn't the two modes be identical? (see settings below. Isn't turning on "Match Print Colors" in preview analogous to turning on "Proof Colors"?)
Under the hood, is Photoshop using two different algorithms to display? Any idea what they are?


Also, it seems easy to reproduce. I loaded Bill Atkinson's printer test image, which has out of gamut colors. The soft proof gamut warnings are quite different in soft proof window than print preview.

Oddly, the out of gamut results are also different between a MacPro with 30" NEC PA301W and a MacBook Pro (both running the same PS and OS versions)?




PS, there's a "Preview" checkbox in the Soft Proof dialog box. It seems to have absolutely zero effect. Anyone understand what it is supposed to do?


Misc.
I tried different printer profiles but it still shows big diffs between Soft Proof and Print Preview (so not print profile corruption).

Renamed Photoshop prefs folder (resetting photoshop prefs) made no visible difference.

The tech support guy even tried "Assign Color Profile" sRGB to my ProPhoto image and changed display profile to sRGB. Don't know why, but it made an awful teal looking sky.


My Settings:
MacPro with recently calibrated monitor (high end 30" NEC PA301W with Spectraview II) at 40cd/m2, White Point 5000K, Gamma 1.8, monitor default contrast ratio. Did similar test with Macbook Pro.

In Soft Proof:
Printer Profile matches loaded paper. Preserve RGB NOT checked. Perceptual Rendering. Black Point Comp & Simulate Paper Color checked (although also tried with it off, and it didn't impact the issue of Soft Proof not matching).

In print preview:
Checked: Black Point Comp; Match Print colors, gamut warning, show paper white.
And the usual settings: Photoshop Manages Colors, Printer Profile matches loaded paper. Normal Printing. Perceptual Rendering (and tried Relative and it doesn't impact the issue of Soft Proof not matching)

(there's no double color management going on. Macintosh makes it all but impossible. Selecting "photoshop manages colors" disables all printer color management in "Print Setting" dialogs)

Using most current Photoshop CC 2017 (with tech support even went back and tried in PS 2015 but no change).



Please see screenshot examples below

[Manfred M]

If Adobe can't give you the answers to some of the questions you are asking, I'm not sure that we can. A lot of this is proprietary information.

I suspect that your screen is way too dark - you should be running it between 80 and 120 nits (candela / sq m), also white point 6500K. Pretty well everyone I have spoken to tends to run at 120 nits and this does result in prints that are too dark; so further adjustment to print is required. I seem to remember reading that Apple switched from the 1.8 gamma to the more generally used 2.2 with OSX 10.8 (Mountain Lion) and later.

I find soft proofing is fine for identify out of gamut issues, but little else. When using a screen you are displaying additive colour, RGB using transmitted light to emulate a process that is a subtractive colour, CMYK process that uses reflected light. A high end colour photo printer will get colours that exceed the AdobeRGB colour space, yet no computer screen that I am aware of even hits 100% AdobeRGB, so getting an exact match is never going to happen.

I do my on-screen to print adjustment via test prints and once I have locked in the amount, it does not vary unless I change my screen settings so it is effectively a constant.

[Polar01]

I am going to offer my 5 cents worth as we no longer use pennies here in Canada so no 2 cents worth. I agree with Manfred that the monitor set at 40 is not bright enough, setting should be in the range of 80 to 120 I myself use a value of 100, along with a white point of 6500K and a gamma of 1.8 however I believe that Apple requires 2.2. I have never used the image that appears in the Photoshop Print Settings dialogue for other than to make sure the image is positioned correctly on the paper. It believe the image that appears there is not the soft proof image. My method of soft proofing is as follows, make a duplicate of the image, now select proof (of duplicate), select your paper ICC profile to be applied, now compare the original to the soft proof of the duplicate. If ok then print the duplicate, however if difference between the two then adjust the duplicate until is looks like the original.

Cheers: Allan

[ChrisOgden]

I appreciate you both taking the time to respond!

The monitor brightness setting greatly depends on one's editing environment. I have a wonderfully dark space and setting brightness levels at 40 matches the net result 99% spot on. I can and do easily flip to 70 for non-color critical work.

The primary purpose of my post may have gotten a bit lost. I apologize if I included too much detail.

Until recently, I actually had Soft Proofing "dialed in" to 98% or better WYSIWYG. But "something" changed (perhaps an OS X or Photoshop upgrade, perhaps the monitor is off, etc.). I even had standard print adjustments for various papers programmed in as Photoshop Actions.

It's been a couple months since I had printed intensely and I no longer have WYSIWYG. Soft preview (that worked reliably before) was way off. That's when I noticed that the Print Preview rendering was very close to WYSIWYG.

Hence the motivation for my post: How do I get Soft Proof and Print Preview renderings to match? (and then I'd be back to WYSIWG)

Thanks for your input Manfred and Allan!

[Manfred M]

The monitor brightness setting greatly depends on one's editing environment. I have a wonderfully dark space and setting brightness levels at 40 matches the net result 99% spot on. I can and do easily flip to 70 for non-color critical work.

That assumption is only correct if the light source in the screen has a linear response at those illumination levels. Many devices tend to be linear in the mid-range, and less so at both extremes. It is possible that the screen you are using is, but on the other hand it might not be; this is something that it not published.

In theory, calibration / profiling should get you a decent result, but if you jump back and forth between 40 and 70 nits, you should be running individual profiles for both those settings.

As both Allan and I have suggested; 80 - 120 nits is generally the range that most experts recommend.

Until recently, I actually had Soft Proofing "dialed in" to 98% or better WYSIWYG. But "something" changed (perhaps an OS X or Photoshop upgrade, perhaps the monitor is off, etc.). I even had standard print adjustments for various papers programmed in as Photoshop Actions.

It's been a couple months since I had printed intensely and I no longer have WYSIWYG. Soft preview (that worked reliably before) was way off. That's when I noticed that the Print Preview rendering was very close to WYSIWYG.

Hence the motivation for my post: How do I get Soft Proof and Print Preview renderings to match? (and then I'd be back to WYSIWG)

You are definitely following a very non-standard workflow and frankly I don't understand why you are doing so. The whole concept of a colour managed workflow is that your camera to screen to printer colours will transfer correctly. The only "issue" in printing is controlling the brightness, and the only way I know of doing that is test prints. You seem to be jumping through some rather strange hoops. In fact, Soft Proofing is probably going to be as close as you are going to get in seeing what the final print will look like, but it is an emulation of a reflected light, subtractive CMYK process done on an additive, transmitted light RGB device, so it will not be 100% accurate.

Soft proofing is all about identifying out of gamut (OOG) situations. If there are any, you have a choice of either going back and manually tweaking those colours and bringing them into gamut (and thereby possibly throwing other colours off) or using rendering intents and letting Photoshop take care of that for you.

I suspect the reason that Adobe was not able to answer your question is that you are using the software in a way that was never intended. I frankly don't know how accurately the Print Preview manages colours (yes there are options to show print colour, gamut warning and paper shade), but given the tiny size of this preview, I'm fairly certain Adobe never meant to use it the way you do. I suspect that is the reason you didn't get the answer you were looking for when you spoke to tech support; it's not a work flow that tends to be used.