CREATE AN ACTION FOR SOFT PROOFING
By Sean Bagshaw[1]
Translated into Print by John Gilbert[2]
We are just about ready to start the action. Once we click on the action button a red circle
will light up at the bottom of the Action Panel to indicate that we are
recording. Everything we do from this
point on will be recorded. Ready? Click the
action button. The first step is to
record a duplicate of our image. Go to
the Image Menu and select Duplicate. In
the Duplicate Image Window, check the merge layer box and click on “OK”. You should now have the original photo opened
in Photoshop with all its layers and a copy of that image with all the layers
merged into just a background layer. Toggle
between the two images to see the original with all its layers and the copy
image with only a background layer. At
this point let’s close the original image file.
Remember when asked if you want to save the changes select “no” because we don’t want to save it
with the lighten layer activated.
At this point we have two duplicate files open in Photoshop, copy2 and copy. I want to be able to see both copies at the
same time in my window. Go to the drop down Window’s menu, select arrange, and
then 2 up vertical. (Windows>Arrange>2Up
Vertical) .Right now you should be able to see two images side by side.
Remember we are still recording but you can
close the actions panel to give you more viewing capabilities. Next we want to apply
the premium luster photo
paper profile to one of the images, let’s apply it to our first copy.
From the View, drop down menu, select Proof Setup, then
Custom. (View>Proof Setup>Custom). A “Custom Proof Condition” window will
open. In the “Device to Simulate
dropdown menu select the paper type you want to simulate, in this example we
are going to select the Epson Styles Pro 4900 Premium Luster Paper.
I use an Epson 4900 printer and I print on
luster paper so that is why I selected this option. You will need to select the paper type that
matches with your printer brand so you get the correct paper profile. Also
select Relative Chromatic rendering from the rendering intent box. This seems to give the closest look at what
we want to see. Put a check mark in the Black Point Compensation Box, and
finally check the Simulate Paper Color under the display options section of
this custom proof condition window.
It has been my experience as well as others that Photoshop
tends to be a little heavy-handed when it's simulating the paper color so keep
that in mind. Warning your simulated proof may
look worse on the screen than it will when you print it. Click okay. Immediately
you can see the simulated print version (copy) and the monitor version (copy2).
The simulated copy is much duller, flatter, lower contrast, and a little bit
cooler (bluer) then the screen image. If
we printed this out at this point it is going to look a little worse than it
actually would. Remember sometimes Photoshop
can overdo it a bit and the results would not match the monitor version.
Our goal is to get the simulated copy to look
as much as possible like our screen copy2.
We need to increase contrast, increase saturation,
and add a little bit of luminosity brightness.
We may also need to warm the simulated copy image a little. These additional adjustments will help get it
ready to print. Remember we will apply adjustments until we get the print
version (copy) to match the monitor version (copy2).
First let’s create a
curves adjustment layer. (Layer Menu>New Adjustment Layer> Curves). We
will use this to brighten our print image (copy) Now add a marker to the curves
line in the shadow area to anchor the darks and mid-tones, then pull the top
part of the curve line up to add some highlight luminosity to our print image.
We can see that brightening up the highlights also
increases the contrast a little bit too much. So we are now going to bring up the shadows by pulling up on my dark and mid-tone anchor point just
a little bit to maintain the contrast but also bring up the overall luminosity
of the image. It
can be slightly different for every image so
you may have to make adjustments accordingly. By clicking the layer on and off
you can see the before and the after what effect your
adjustment is having.
The next
thing we need to do is bring back some lost saturation
so let’s add a hue saturation
adjustment layer to bring up the saturation. (Layer Menu>New Adjustment
Layer> Hue Saturation) Don’t overdo it, increase the saturation slider to
about nine or ten.
“I have
spent hours watching Sean’s video and converting it into a printed version for
my personal use as a follow along guide.
Sean has a whole series of video tutorials for processing images using
Luminosity Masks. (Click here to be taken to his web site.) I
highly recommend them. Sean’s videos
along with Tony Kuyper’s TKActions Panel for Luminosity Masks (Click here to be takento Tony’s web site.) will be
the best investment you make and will improve your post processing by 100%
Plus. John Gilbert”
We can't bring back
all the lost color because there are some
colors in the screen image that are just out of gamut for printing based on our
paper selection. Bottom line there
are some colors that we will not be able to reach but we can get closer.
The final thing is to combat the cooling or
bluing of some of the colors in here that premium
luster photo paper has. To do that we
are going to use Photoshop’s photo filter and add a warming filter #85
layer. (Layer Menu>New Adjustment
Layer> Photo Filter)
You may need to turn down the opacity on this layer a
bit. You should be able to see that the two images still don't match perfectly but if
we look at where
we began, by holding down the Alt key and
clicking on the eyeball layer icon next to the
background layer image, we can turn off all the other
adjustment layers to see where we started. Repeat this step by holding down the Alt key and
click on the eyeball layer icon next to the
background layer image again to turn all the
layers back on.
You can toggle back and forth to see the before and after
adjustments you’ve made. We can see that we're now getting our image much closer to what
we wanted and so it should now print closer. In fact now we can go back up to the View Menu and toggle the “Proof Colors” on
and off to see the before and after. You could also click CTRL-Y to toggle the
Proof Simulation on an off. So without the
print simulation turned on our adjustments really pump the image up, probably
more than our intent but it should print looking closer to what we see on the
monitor. We can’t get the print version to be identical to the monitor version
because of the range of gamut’s of the monitor verses our paper selection.
We can
now stop recording our action. Open up
the action pallet and hit the stop button and stop recording because
essentially we are done. (Windows
Menu> Actions or Alt + F9)
We now have an action that will create a soft
proofing anytime we want to soft proof a print using Premium Luster Paper. All we need to do is run the action to get to
a point where we are close to printing.
To test our action close the two views
and then go open our original or a new image, then add a “Levels Adjustment
Layer” set to “Screen Blending Mode”, with a 50% opacity, because as I stated
above my Epson Printer has a tendency to print darker than what I see on my
monitor. Once I hit play, the action will
go through all the steps, it'll flatten the image, close the original master, create
the duplicates, and now all I need to do is go to window, (Windows>Arrange>2Up
Vertical) arrange the two copies vertically so that they are side by side, then
close the action panel and here is my image with the profile simulation applied
and here's my comparison image.
We can
see that all those adjustments have been applied and we can go in and fine tune
them if we need to. Once we have the image
looking as close to the monitor version as possible, close copy2 but don’t save
it. Click CTRL-Y to turn off the simulation. Next size the simulated copy for print and do
any print sharpening that is necessary before sending it off to be printed. This
is how you create an action that will make your soft proofing go much faster
and you can actually produce a whole series of actions for different paper
types so that whatever paper you're going to print on you can just do a single
click on the action for that paper type and automatically get set up with a
proof for printing.
I hope you find this
helpful and it saves you some time. I
use to print and adjust, then print again and adjust again until I got it the
way I wanted. If you don’t own your own
printer, test this by having a smaller print printed by an online printing
service or by a local printer or even a friend.
[2]
John Gilbert: Translated into a pdf document but using his pictures and printer
profiles after creating this action based on Sean Bagshaw’s tutorial.