The Adobe Photoshop software offers a so-called ‘soft proof’ function with which, for example, an RGB file from a camera can be displayed in a CMYK colour space. This so-called soft proof in Adobe Photoshop has some advantages, but also serious disadvantages:
Advantages of Photoshop Softproof:
- A colourful RGB file can be quickly and easily simulated in a usually smaller CMYK colour space
- For image retouching, for example, the colours that would lie outside the later CMYK colour space can be quickly displayed and visualised so that the retoucher knows which areas of the image to pay particular attention to, as the colours of the original image in the print colour space will be ‘out of gamut’.
- Different CMYK colour spaces can be quickly and easily simulated against each other,
Disadvantages of Photoshop Softproof:
- With its name ‘soft proof’, the Photoshop soft proof simulates that it really is a binding colour representation of a file on the monitor. Of course, this is by no means the case. Why? Photoshop Softproof is not interested in whether the monitor is calibrated or has a completely green cast and is set up incorrectly. It does not know the monitor, so the softproof will only be reasonably consistent if the monitor is correctly calibrated.
- The Photoshop soft proof does not see whether colours are ‘in gamut’. Example: With a correctly calibrated monitor that can cover the sRGB colour space, a cyan in the ISOCoatedV2 print colour space is far outside the displayable colour space. Photoshop doesn’t care about this, it still displays a Photoshop soft proof, even though it cannot be colour-accurate.
- Compared to a real soft proof on soft proof software such as Spectraproof, a Photoshop soft proof cannot take ambient light into account. Whether at 7 a.m. at sunrise, at 1 p.m. in full sun, in winter with clouds or at night with fluorescent light: Photoshop always shows a great Photoshop softproof on the same monitor, although a colour sample placed next to the monitor would always look different. In a real soft proof, the ambient light is of course also measured and adjusted so that a colour sample placed underneath looks identical to the soft proof on the monitor.
Conclusion: There is a real soft proof and a Photoshop soft proof
The real softproof measures and validates the monitor, the softproof standard light and the file displayed via a softproof. The soft proof software Spectraproof validates the CMYK colours displayed on the monitor, Spectraproof generates a report and thus proves the correct colour representation by means of an individual measurement result for the soft proof, the monitor and the soft proof standard lighting.
Of course, Photoshop Softproof cannot do all this, it merely displays a larger colour space for a smaller CMYK colour space. That is all. Therefore, it would actually be good if Photoshop would rename its ‘Photoshop Softproof’ to a kind of ‘CMYK colour space simulation’. Because what Photoshop can do doesn’t really have much to do with a real soft proof.
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