Happy new year first of all; wish all of you the best for 2023!
In PL6 I use DXO Wide Gamut as a standard Working Colour Space. I also use QimageOne for printing (love it) and a Canon Prograf1000 as my printer. Only Hahnemühle Fine art papers with their Hahnemühle paper profiles.
I noticed that I got good prints when working and soft proofing in “Wide Gamut” (PL new colour space) / exporting as 16-bit tiff with “Same as Soft Proofing” setting in the export window. Exporting as “Wide Gamut” is not a selectable option inside PL6’s export window.
Inside QimageOne I select the proper paper profile for a specific Hahnemühle Fine Art paper and the print.
Questions:
Is it correct that when Soft Proofing is set to " Wide Gamut" and if I then export as " Same as Soft Proofing", the “Wide Gamut” colour space is then the colour space imported in QimageOne?
In QimageOne I then choose the proper paper profile. This obviously limits the “Wide Gamut” space?
My prints are very good, when I use this workflow and I do not see any out of gamut colours when soft proofing inside QimageOne. Ofcourse there where no out of gamut colours inside PL (I took care of that).
But…once inside QimageOne and then applying paper profiles…still nothing out of gamut in (limited?) paper profile. Where did any conversion take place? On the QimageOne side maybe? Elsewhere?
Thank you. I read that. That’ s why I found it surprising that my prints on Hahnemühle Fine Art Baryta looked that good without even using the " appropriate ICC profile" inside PL…only in QimageOne.
At present, soft proof with paper profiles is not fully working yet (should be delivered shortly).
For printing and to keep maximum quality & colour space export your pic as 16bit TIFF with ICC Profile ProPhotoRGB, effective since PL6. Then, in QImage you choose your paper profile and print.
What you can do if you like, choose one of these well known test images, delivered in ProPhotoRGB colour space and containing out of gamut colours. You export such a file in PL6 to ProPhotoRGB as well to AdobeRGB and print both version … to check for differencies after having dried properly.
Hello again! In the Soft Proofing setting I do not see “Wide Gamut” as a choice. I see only sRGB IEC61966-2.1, Display P3, Adobe RBG (1998), Rec. 2020, and ProPhoto RBG as the choices. I ask because this setting may be important depending on your workflow. As I pointed out in a recent post, in the Export to Disk Options interface, if you select Same as Soft Proofing and the ICC Profile is anything other than sRGB IEC61966-2.1, the program will embed the corresponding ICC color profile at export. The sRGB IEC61966-2.1 selection will produce a color tag but will not embed a profile. I do not use Qimage personally but understand that it is very good at color management. Your exported TIFF file may have contained an sRGB color tag or, more likely, an embedded wider gamut color profile as discussed above. In that event Qimage would have no trouble in producing a good print.
Thank you Wolfgang.
I know soft proof with paper profiles (as in “Simulate paper & ink”), isn’ t yet available.
But…under “Soft Proofing” and ICC Profile I can make a choice. Beside the “regular” choices like sRGB and AdobeRGB, I also have these:
So, my paper profiles are there (HFA), as is my Eizo setting (for a specific paper) and more, and also “WideGamut”. as you can see. I think it’ s probably a matter of trial and error when using those soft proof settings. And then…it’ s impossible to set the Working color space to “WideGamut” ; only Classic.
So, I could set soft proofing to “WideGamut”, while Working color space cannot be set “WideGamut” ; (“not yet available for RGB images”).
Not sure yet, why it IS possible to import raw images as I like…and then the option of “WideGamut” as working color space IS available (in my case .ARW files from my Sony camera). In that case I have the same choices in soft proofing as shown above. So WideGamut colour space and WideGamut soft proof option.
I’ ve used those test images several times before…but then “working” on them in order to get them in gamut for specific papers and for Eizo monitor settings.
I’ve followed your advice to just leave everything as it is with these files and export / print in AdobeRGB and ProPhotoRGB. Didn’t do any soft proofing and not change anything.
I did not realise how big the difference is between AdobeRGB and ProPhotoRGB…ProPhotoRGB shows much more vividly and also more accurate than AdobeRGB. Especially in more saturated colours ofcourse (deep reds for instance). To me, this shows that at least my printer can print beyond AdobeRGB.
I can export as “Same as Soft proofing” . Wonder if that would mean exporting in the WideGamut setting whenever I pick WideGamut in Soft proofing.
In short: exporting as “same as soft proofing” …means WideGamut, when I choose this as soft proof setting (?).
Thanks, Mujabad - I think I can see what’s happening now. When you select any of the profiles from the Import ICC Profiles list in the Soft Proofing interface, then export Same as Soft Proofing, the program will embed that profile in the exported file. Qimage then has that embedded profile information along with all the other information you had provided it in setting up for the print.
Great! Thinking ahead, after completing soft proofing, it will probably be best to uncheck the Soft Proofing box. Then move to a normal printing worfkflow as described so well by Wolfgang. That is, don’t export Same as Soft Proofing. Export the image as a 16-bit TIFF with an embedded ICC profile of your choice, probably ProPhoto, but you can experiment to see what works best in your Qimage / printer setup. Cheers!
An aside (and off topic too, sorry). When an image file is instead exported for internet use or other display purposes, I’m thinking one could just leave the Soft Proofing box checked and then use the Same as Soft Proofing setting in the Export to Disk interface. This would produce an image file with an appropriate color tag or embedded ICC color profile matching the Soft Proofing setting. Kind of neat.
you ‘discovered’, your printer can output more than your monitor [ the same here ]
→ Monitor gamut warning / blue overlay to highlight the area with out-of-gamut colours
your screenshot:
the first 5 are the display profiles, you can softproof to
→ when exporting to the web → use sRGB IEC61996-2.1
→ as noted by @Egregius “WideGamut” is not the same as DxO’s WideGamut
as soon SP is (fully) working, you can use the Destination gamut warning / red overlay
in conjunction with RI perceptual / relative colorimetric and Paper + ink simulation
→ softproof for printing w/o Paper + ink simulation doesn’t make much sense
→ with MK-paper the softproof will show you much bigger differencies than with PK-paper
for now, please stay with as explained above and export as ProPhotoRGB …
“At present, soft proof with paper profiles is not fully working yet (should be delivered shortly).”
Your focus here (I think) is on the grayed-out checkbox “Simulate paper and ink”; others have referred more generally to the unfinished soft proofing interface.
But where are we exactly? My two cents follow.
For images destined for the internet or for use on other display hardware, I think the Soft Proofing interface is fully operational right now.
For exported images that will be used in free-standing printing applications like Qimage, Epson Print Layout, etc., I think the Soft Proofing interface is also fully operational, as you can import your own printer / paper profiles or those from a manufacture and soft proof now. Plugins or direct export to other applications I don’t use and won’t comment.
Might the grayed-out check box for Simulate paper then only relate to possible changes in DxO PL’s own print module? DxO should be in perfect position to take full advantage of the new wide gamut / soft proofing capabilities. It will be interesting to see what they come up with and how it will stack up against the competition and entrenched printing workflows.
@mujabad was asking about printing. The concerning softproof in PL6 is not fully working yet.
Therefore better to wait for an upcoming update, which then should iron out some annoyances too.
which simply means, with ‘these specifics’ I can’t help further
a side note
the Epson Print Layout version I know doesn’t offer softproof,
but is helpful with Epson’s ABW mode
I have no experience with PL’s print module
For web use, export with sRGB IEC61996-2.1.
note – when using the export option “Same as Soft Proofing”, make sure SP is ON !
otherwise the equivalent profile is not embedded respectively the original profile
(e.g. AdobeRGB from the camera setting) is not replaced – and you don’t notice
*I’ ll certainly do this for some images. I hope SP will soon be fully working (destination/in conjunction with proper RI and paper/ink simulation). At the moment there are ofcourse large patches out-of-gamut colours when I want to print on certain papers in QimageOne. I cannot work on these files inside QimageOne (only for printing), so it’ s not ideal to go back to PL to work on files again.
The only soft proofing I rarely do is via Preview or the ColorSync Utility, where I assign the profile I created for the paper/ink in the print dialog.
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