| Soft Proofing |
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| Soft proofing is a method that allows you to preview how a final printed photograph or piece of artwork will look when it has been printed by a particular printer. It simulates the colors of the final print using your computer and an ICC profile, extrapolating the final color from the starting color of the image and the profile applied. |
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| If your monitor is properly calibrated, you will be able to use the ICC profile downloaded from our site to see what your prints will look like on our printers. The prints should be identical, regardless of what size print you choose to order. |
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| To do a soft proof in Adobe Photoshop, follow these simple instructions: |
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| 1.Make sure you have the profiles installed. If you did the installation while Photoshop was running, please exit and reopen Photoshop. |
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| 2.Make sure that you are working in the sRGB workspace in Photoshop. Our printers make color adjustments based on the assumption that your file is sRGB (the standard color space for most digital cameras). To set sRGB as your workspace, go to Edit > Color Settings and select sRGB from the dropdown menu next to RGB. If your image is CMYK, you will need to convert it to RGB. We require that the files uploaded to us be RGB. |
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3.When you are ready to see what your image will look like when it's printed, go to View > Proof Setup > Custom... A dialog box will pop up. On the Profile dropdown, select either 'giftsprints2008.icc' or from the list. Make sure the Preserve Color Numbers checkbox is NOT selected and click the Preview checkbox if you would like to preview the proofing. Select OK to make adjustments to the photo while the soft proofing is enabled. |
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| 4.To turn off the proof, go to View > View Proofs and uncheck it. This will return your view to the native sRGB. |
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| Examples: |
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| The images below show you what a photograph looks like in the original sRGB and with soft proofing turned on for both of our printers. The difference should be most noticeable when your image has a lot of colors that are not easily reproducible on paper with a printer. |
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