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Apple 5K Display Review and Soft Proofing sRGB JPEGs

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Apple 5K display review

Reviewing the new Apple 5K display, and a tutorial on converting images to sRGB JPEGs for soft proofing.

Most consumer-grade monitors won’t cut it for color-critical media editing, but expensive wide gamut monitors can be out of reach for many. So where does the Apple Retina 5K display, included with the new iMac, fit in? Professional photographer Renée Besta talks pros, cons, specs, and more on the new Apple display to pin down who would benefit from purchasing it, and who wouldn’t.

Later in the show, Renée lays out a workflow to soft proof sRGB JPEGs that were originally shot in ProPhoto RGB or Adobe RGB (written tutorial with screenshot for this process available in show notes).

  • Apple’s new 5K display – Specs, uses, pitfalls, & more
  • Why the new iMac can be a great deal
  • Why the new iMac can be a not so great deal
  • Colorimetric vs. perceptual rendering intents – There’s no hard rule on which to use
  • Why Breathing Color’s custom ICC profiles say to use perceptual, and why you can ignore this if you know what you’re doing
  • Converting a ProPhoto or Adobe RGB file to an sRGB JPEG to send to a lab for c-prints
  • Soft proofing – view in original color space or output color space?
  • Soft proofing sRGB JPEGs is harder than ProPhoto

Listen in to hear the Apple 5K display review and learn about soft proofing

Show Notes

  • Listeners featured in this episode include Dave Singh from STM Graphics, and Bob Nardi from BobNardi.com.
  • Full specs on the Apple 5K Display can be found here.
  • Download Renee’s additional information and resources from this episode including tutorials for converting ProPhoto/Adobe RGB images to sRGB JPEGs and soft-proofing in Photoshop or Lightroom by clicking here.
  • Check out Renee’s website at RenMarPhoto.com.
  • Love the show? Have some feedback for us? Leave us a review on iTunes.

Audio Transcription

Prefer to read over listen? Want to save this conversation for reference later? We transcribe all of our shows for these reasons! Download this episode’s transcription below:

Or, to view a web version of the transcript:


[Music]

Announcer 1: You are listening to the AskBC podcast – your printmaking questions, answered by the experts!

Justin: Hey guys, this is your host Justin, welcome to episode 28 of the AskBC podcast!

Special guest Renee Besta joins us today to talk about color reproduction with Apple’s 5K display, paper profile rendering intents,and soft proofing best practices.

Renee has made guest appearances here and on the BC blog a number of times. She is extremely knowledgable when it comes to color management, photography, and printmaking workflows and more. Be sure to check out her site at renmarphoto.com, and also you can use the BC blog search bar to find other articles by Renee if you haven’t already.

Without further adieu, let’s go ahead and jump into the show.

Announcer 2: Dave Singh with STM Graphics asks, “Regarding monitors, you never touched on the new 5K screen from Apple.” He asks, “How do you get an NEC monitor for an iMac?” Second part of his question is, “Also, in a previous episode regarding rendering intents, you stated that relative colorimetric is the best color space for output, however Breathing Color makes output profiles with perceptual rendering intent for Canon paper profiles.”

Renee: Okay, first of all. Good morning, Justin, and thank you so much for having me back.

Justin: Definitely.

Renee: This is a great question. I’ve actually had a lot of people write me independently, contact me via my website, about the 5K screen since I was so pro-NEC and talking about the Eizo monitors.

First of all, I’ve seen this – for people that don’t know or don’t use Macs, this is actually the new iMac that has a built-in 5K retina display. So i mean, there’s absolutely no question that this display is totally jaw-dropping when you go into the Apple store and look at it. You almost want to genuflect when you walk in the room. Everything looks very detailed, crisp, and life-like.

One thing I would say is that be aware that, you know, although this display looks awesome, it’s still geared mainly for people doing non-color-critical work.

So the answer is gonna be, it depends on your personal situation, and I’ll get into a little bit here on the specs and how those relate.

This is a 27” display, it has in-plane switching IPS technology, the resolution is 5120×2880, now that is an absolute huge number of pixels.

Justin: Crazy.

Renee: So, you have to keep in mind for optimal viewing and to really take advantage of a display, the source material that you’re feeding to it needs to kind of be up to the task. And if it’s not, it’s kind of like similar to watching an HD television set with an SD signal.

So, at that high of a resolution, your type size in certain applications may be really tiny, you may have to do some adjustments on your screen or in palettes of certain applications. They’re not all optimized for these types of displays, but it is, you know, an awesome display.

Now according to the specs, it covers about 100%, maybe 102% of the sRGB color space. So it’s not considered a true wide gamut display. Independent test results that I’ve read show about 79% of the Adobe RGB coverage. It’s also not back-lit like an LAD display, so you can keep that in mind.

But, you know, one thing, I’ve read phenomenal reviews on this, it’s a great computer. It’s a really nice display. But many of these reviewers are biased, and they usually diss all wide gamut displays as being completely unnecessary. And I understand why, it’s because most people doing image editing are usually just posting sRGB JPEGs on the web, or they’re having the more inexpensive digital chromogenic, or so-called c-prints made, sending out to a photo lab.

So then you really don’t need a wide gamut display, so that’s not a judgement or anything on my part, it’s just dependent on your particular situation. So these people are not going to do editing with the goal of fine art printing, ie: inkjet pigment prints, so they don’t really care or need a wide gamut display, so it depends – what are Dave’s needs and goals?

Is he making his own inkjet prints or sending them out to a lab just for c-prints?

Also, that display is still a super high-gloss screen that is still not optimal for photo editing, despite improvements that have been made to reduce some of the reflections.

I’ve commented before in articles that I’ve written and on podcasts, you know, with these types of displays, everything looks really super sharp and super saturated, but that does not mean the file itself is that way in reality, if that makes sense.

Justin: Definitely.

Renee: You know, matte screens are preferred always for color-critical work, which is why NEC and Eizo make matte screens.

For instance, I’ve found it difficult to apply proper sharpening to an image on a high-gloss display, they always look super-sharp anyway. Just because of, you know, you’ve got this dense layer of high-glass gloss there, so it’s just really, really hard to determine “It looks sharp,” and then you print and it’s not so sharp, so I really don’t like, for my purposes, using it.

But, you know, if your goal is just posting sRGB JPEGs to the web and you’re gonna send out to a typical photo lab, which will require an sRGB JPEG, that’s the optimal file spec for that type of printing, you know, it’s wonderful.

The graphics card can also support a second display, according to Apple, up to 4840×2160 pixels, so you can certainly add an additional NEC for color-critical work, and in fact, I’ve researched a lot of printing forums and many people are doing exactly that. Because it’s a really good deal – the computer itself is awesome, and when you compare it to the cost of buying Dell’s new UltraSharp 5K display, that costs about $2,200 for the Dell, so the retina iMac starts around $2,000. It’s kind of a better buy in that you’re getting a computer along with the display, and, you know, there are obviously upgrades that can be done to that iMac.

So, let me just go over some of the test results that I’ve read about this, when people have checked it out. Again, the gamut is just slightly larger than sRGB. The color-accuracy, they’re saying it’s not really great out of the box, of course it needs to be calibrated and profiled anyway.

But one of the things I have noticed is that the luminance, what some people call “brightness,” uniformity, is not so great. In other words, it’s gonna be brightener in the center than at the edges, and the color-accuracy, again, when you’re looking at a delta-E rating, not so great.

Again, it may be perfectly fine, I don’t mean, again, to come across as saying something negative about it – it depends on your needs and goals, but always with that type of display, that’s what you’re paying for in the really expensive NECs and the Eizos, is having color fidelity, color accuracy, the luminance being uniform corner-to-corner, top-to-bottom, left-to-right, center out to the edges.

So you just, at that price point, are not gonna get that with a retina display, despite how wonderful it looks.

So, basically, people see variations across the panel shifting towards yellow near the corners, and this is common. I wouldn’t mention it, except that I read this quite a bit, and some people have returned it for that reason. They did color-critical work. They enjoy how it looks, I mean obviously it’s great for videos and other applications, so, you know, again it depends on what he wants to do, but if you’re going to add an NEC, what I would definitely do is to upgrade the video card for it, so that it can drive a second display.

So Apple offers – it comes with 2GB of video RAM normally, you can update it to a 4GB card that’s slightly faster. So if you’re gonna add something like an external NEC, then you’re going to probably want to upgrade the graphics card as well to drive that.

So many people are doing that, I have seen people say “I bought it because it’s a great deal for the computer and the display for a lot of purposes, and then I have this external.”

It could even be a Dell, one of the Dell UltraSharps, that have a great – a wider gamut. Or an NEC. And they’re doing that for the color-critical work. So it’s an option. Depends on your needs.

Justin: Yeah, seems like a great solution. Yeah, definitely.

I think, you know, the Apple display will cover 80% of what one might use it for, and then the 20% you invest in something, you know, a display that’s designed for color accuracy, kind of like what you were saying – if you need that.

I’d say it’s a good solution.

Renee: Yeah, if you need it – are you doing inkjet printing, or are you just sending to a lab where sRGB is all you’re going to use anyway, then you don’t need to worry about that. And it is beautiful and it is a great deal, I think, for the price, like I said, compared to the Dell – you’re getting a computer and everything for starting at two thousand dollars.

Justin: Yeah, it’s not bad at all.

[Part 2 of the question]

Renee: I love these questions, because I get them all the time from students and people write me through my website.

First of all, I did actually not say relative colorimetric was always the best choice to use. I said the opposite – to test both perceptual and relative colorimetric, see what looks best to your eyes.

What I did say was that in most circumstances, I find relative colorimetric, for my situation, works well for me. Of course that’s because I print and I keep my files in the highest color space ProPhotoRGB 16-bit. Depends on the printer that you’re using, what its gamut is, you know, I went over – so you can relisten to that podcast what the differences are.

But you have to understand with the rendering intents and which one you use, it’s going to be very, very much image dependent.

I mean, some images don’t have that much color – period. They’re sort of flat. It depends on what colors are present, so it may not make any difference. It’s also very much printer and paper and profile-dependent. So the qualities of those, you know, make a difference.

Maybe on a certain paper with a certain printer using a certain profile, one will work better than the other. So you really do need to test, and you can do that by soft proofing.

Remember, taking a question from Otis from Indiana on the Lightroom proofing – you can just click different rendering intents and see which one looks better.

Another area of confusion here, when he says “Breathing Color makes a profile with perceptual,” that’s actually not the case. Just like all paper manufacturers, people think that they’re actually saying, “Oh, we made this profile using either perceptual or relative.” And it’s just not the case, because when you make a profile, as you know, all the color management must be completely turned off. That is how profiles are made.

You don’t want anything done – you’re printing out hundreds or, in some cases, thousands of target color swatches and then measuring them. You want them to print exactly as they’re going to print so you can see how they come out and then corrections are made in the profile saying, “Well it’s supposed to look like ‘this’,” because they’re comparing target numbers. Measuring how it prints, and then basically the profile is sort of a correction. That’s the best way I can put it.

Justin: Yeah.

Renee: So basically, the reason this is getting confusing is that in the instructions, Breathing Color and other paper manufacturers, it will say, normally, to choose perceptual.

Now sometimes I’ve seen with Hahnemuhle, it’ll say relative or with Museo paper, once in a while. But normally it’ll say in the instructions, “Choose perceptual.” And I think the reason for this, that manufacturers like to say that, is they feel that rendering intent is safer to recommend because perceptual is probably less likely to result in any strange, out-of-gamut type of color mapping.

Because what it does is compress everything, and, as I’ve said before, it reworks the in gamut colors, or shifts them, so that you have an overall – tries to maintain the “pleasing look,” if you will, of the image itself.

Where as with relative, you’re only sort of changing the out of gamut colors and mapping them to the nearest reproducible hue. So it’s kind of like safer to just say use perceptual, it’s like likely to result in any kind of strange-looking print, so that’ll result in less technical support issues, if you will.

So I think, I don’t know about you, I’m not saying that’s why you do it, I would just prefer manufacturers don’t say one way or the other, that they say “experiment – these are the two that are relevant to photo printing, relative or perceptual, test them.”

And that’s it, but just because it says that in the instruction, you know, ICC profiles are aware – let’s just say they’re aware of different intents, but you can apply them, but you can not possibly do that. You can’t even turn color management off in Photoshop any longer, and that became an issue for people I think starting in CS5, that that feature was removed, which ticked people off that were trying to, you know, make these custom profiles and print target images and want to turn it off. That’s the whole point, otherwise how are you going to know how something comes out when you print target swatches?

Justin: Right.

Renee: So it’s not something that you can even apply if you wanted to, so feel free, basically, to use whichever. Print with both or a soft proof using both and see what works best.

It is, again, very image-dependent. What works well with one image, you may want to use a different intent with a different image, or on a different paper. They come out differently.

Justin: Or a different printer, yeah. All depends on the gamut right? The gamuts at play.

Renee: Is there a reason – so I guess I’ll just ask you why you list perceptual in your instructions?

Justin: Yeah, kind of for the same reason you explained.

You know, I’ve always wanted to – or since I’ve learned enough to know what’s proper to do with rendering intents, I’ve always wanted to changed that to say, “It depends on the image, the printer, the paper.” You know, things like that.

But you want to talk about a tech support nightmare, I just feel like that would definitely be one. I think we should put the podcast link to where you first talked about rendering intents right in there somewhere, you know. I think that would be a pretty cool idea.

Renee: Yeah, or the show notes.

It depends on what working color space your image is in. I don’t know if it’s in sRGB, ProPhoto, Adobe RGB – it’s all going to therefor have an effect on the rendering intent. It’s there to map what the printer can not reproduce and decide what it does. It’s a decision – what does it do with out of gamut colors that will not print on a given printer on a given paper with a given profile.

Justin: Right, a lot of variables.

Renee: Exactly.

Justin: Moral of the story is soft proof with both, see what looks better.

Renee: That’s right.

Justin: Easy as that.

Awesome. Well, he didn’t really have a question there, he was just making a statement. Seems like he misunderstood you a little bit on that last podcast, but hoepfully that provides all the information he has, if he has more questions, certainly hope he feels free to comment on the show notes page.

Renee: Right absolutely, I would be happy to go in, I always address any comments or questions people have. But I think he’s just concerned because it says “BC mix output profiles with perceptual for Canon” so he’s a little concerned with, “Well, how can I use relative if you’re saying it works better?”

Well don’t worry about it, they don’t actually make a profile with a rendering intent, it just doesn’t exist.

Justin: Exactly.

Announcer 2: Bob Nardi from BobNardi.com asks, “I am sending out a print to a lab. If you have a profile for soft proofing, should you convert the image to that profile, or convert it to sRGB when sending the file in for printing? Secondly, when soft proofing, should you view the file with the original color space or use the lab’s printer’s color space?”

Renee: Okay, great question. There is a little confusion here on how to soft proof, and it is certainly a confusing process.

It’s one of the most commonly asked questions, always, and it certainly can mess you up if it’s not set up correctly.

People always get confused, and I remember a question from someone else on a prior podcast that said they’re receiving files from clients with embedded profiles, and I asked the question, “Well what embedded profiles?” Because I’ve seen this common mistake that people actually convert their image to the printer profile and you’re not supposed to do that.

So to answer that right off the bat, no, do not ever convert your image to the lab’s profile. It’s the same as if you’re doing an inkjet print, you don’t actually convert it – you have a color working space, which is a profile, it’s a working space profile.

Because when you do that, it’s going to permanently mebed that profile, and it makes it difficult to then do further edits to that image. So, those output profiles, printer profiles, whether it’s going to a lab to do chromogenic prints or an inkjet print, they’re going to be very restrictive, because you have to understand – I described it before like a funnel. You’re going from a really great, large color gamut and you go down, down, down as you go to print to a smaller one.

So, they’re only to be used, those printer profiles, to edit a duplicate copy of your image in order to get the best match to your original file when you’re soft proofing for print. And again, I would refer them to a prior podcast with profile embedding problems.

So I don’t really know…in camera, is Bob shooting JPEGs? Is he shooting in camera RAW? So I’d kind of like to know if he…here’s one of the problems, first of all, I have to presume that he’s making digital c-prints, because he’s talking about a lab and when you say “lab,” that’s normally what it is, so, those labs always, always want JPEGs in the sRGB space and that’s because if you use Adobe RGB or ProPhoto, the prints will come out horrible. It’s a completely different methodology. You’re using either a laser or LED to expose photosensitive materials, and they’re dye-based prints, so you can’t use that. They will have – the color gamuts smaller.

So I don’t know if he’s starting, and I don’t know, first of all, the Photoshop settings, okay? How are they set up? A lot of people don’t bother to configure their Photoshop color settings optimally for how they’re printing. Is it set as a default for the RGB working space to be ProPhoto? Is it set for Adobe RGB? sRGB? When you keep going through this editing process and if you don’t have the boxes checked to warn you if what you are opening is a mismatch to your default color space, it just could go ahead and convert it back and forth to one to the other and kind of really mess you up.

So that’s another thing to keep in mind. ProPhoto and Adobe are going to be optimal for inkjet printing because they have the greatest color gamut, but, again, for the digital c-prints, you’re going to ultimately have to convert it. That complicates the soft proofing, so I’ll get to that in a second.

But, I kind of want to back up and say – Bob didn’t mention what monitor he is using, and whether that is both calibrated and profiled. Now, that’s very critical for image editing and soft proofing. You’re never going to get an accurate soft proof or a print without doing both, and those are two completely different processes.

Calibrating is really setting the hardware to an optimal state – you’re going to set the luminance, or what people call the brightness, the white point, and the gamma (or tonal response curve), and then profiling is actually characterizing how it’s displaying particular colors. So that should be addressed first if you want to do accurate soft proofing.

And I also want to say, when you’re doing it – make sure always that you make a copy of your original – duplicate the image to do any edits.

So, you want to set up the screen. It’s best to…I mentioned this before with Otis’s question in Lightroom – and I don’t know whether he’s using Photoshop or Lightroom to do the soft proofing, it’s set up kind of different. But, there are ways to set up the screen so you can view your original edited image against a soft proof copy of that where you are applying the output profile, if that makes sense.

And then doing it – it’s to get the two to match, because, as I mentioned before, if you just take it and apply the printer profile – and I don’t mean convert it, I mean you’re simulating it.

And by doing that in Photoshop, you go to the View menu, down to Proof Setup, and over to Custom. And then it says “Device to simulate” and then you choose your destination profile, which would be the lab’s profile, that you’re going to be simulating. So that’s how it’s done. I know it’s a little complex. I can write the workflow in the shownotes, so don’t worry about that, but it will say “Device to simulate,” and that’s wheret you select it.

But you want to make sure that it’s a duplicate of what your original image is, otherwise you’re going to start making these changes to it, and, you know, you can really get messed up.

And it’s also like I said before, you may forget, sort of, in the proofing process, what the original image kind of looked like. So if you have that side-by-side with what you’re soft proofing, you can kind of compare and see what you need to do in terms of adjustments with the contrast, the hue saturation, luminance, you always need to open up the shadow details, so make sure you have a duplicate and view them side-by-side.

So as far as the second goes, when soft proofing – he has “Do I use the original color space or the lab printer’s color space?” by that I think he means, sRGB, ProPhoto, or Adobe.

Well, you have to, unfortunately, convert to sRGB, because that’s what the lab printer is going to want. So that’s why I ask – are you starting in camera RAW, starting with a JPEG, what are your Photoshop settings? Basically, let’s just assume he shoots camera RAW, and the default normally for a Lightroom, and camera RAW Photoshop is ProPhoto RGB, so that’s quite a bit different from an sRGB, so let’s just say you have it in that color space and you do a bunch of edits to your image and get it to the way you like.

Unfortunately, you’re then going to have to do a “Save As” convert that to sRGB, and to a JPEG. Then use that sRGB JPEG to do the soft proofing. So that’s like an extra step versus inkjet printing if that makes sense, because with inkjet printing I don’t have to do any of that, I’m gonna keep it in ProPhoto RGB because I’m gonna print it in ProPhoto RGB. I don’t have to then downgrade it, so to speak, to sRGB and to a JPEG, I’m gonna print a TIFF, or a PSD in ProPhoto, because that’s optimal for inkjet printing.

So, it’s a little confusing, because he’s gonna have ot make that extra stpe whether he uses Adobe or ProPhoto. Get those edits done the way he likes it, and then, again, duplicate the image or do a “Save As,” and it’s gonna have to be first converted to sRGB under Edit, Convert to profile, and then save it as a JPEG. Then you’re going to use the sRGB JPEG and duplicate the sRGB JPEG, if that makes sense, to soft proof side-by-side. You’re not going to then compare it to the ProPhoto version, because you’re not going to get an accurate soft proof.

It’s just a little bit, it’s more steps when you’re doing digital c-prints. I mean, you may think it should be simpler, it’s just a digital c-print. But because the lab wants it in sRGB as a JPEG and you’re probably starting in ProPhoto or Adobe on a TIFF or PSD, you have to, you know, convert it to sRGB and the file format to a JPEG because JPEGs are 8-bit and there’s compression used, obviously, for a JPEG, which will throw out some color.

So, if that makes sense, you can’t then take the big ProPhoto 16-bit TIFF and soft proof that because it won’t be accurate, does that make sense?

Justin: Yeah, it makes sense.

So if Bob is using a file that’s a TIFF that’s in ProPhoto, would it make sense for his first step to be to convert that color space over to sRGB and then do edits afterwards?

Renee: Well you want to get the file the way you want it as a ProPhoto 16-bit TIFF or PSD file – looking the way you want it. Then you’re going to duplicate it, or you can do a “Save As” – just duplicate the image, convert it to sRGB and save it as a JPEG. Then, using that sRGB JPEG, you duplicate that as well, okay? Because you’re going to be making edits.

And this is what I don’t like. One of the million things, and I’m sorry – I don’t mean to be in any way derogetory towards people that like to use digital chromogenic prints, but you have to do the soft proof edits on the JPEG, which means, you know what happens – depending on how many changes you make to that, you’re already working with an 8-bit compressed file in a smaller color space, so you can potentially, you know, have combing and histogram – it depends what you end up doing to it.

If it was me I wouldn’t even soft proof it, that’s my opinion. I would just send that sRGB JPEG out to the lab and, in fact, what I recommend people do, because they’re such inexpensive prints, is send the sRGB JPEG that’s not been soft proofed along with one that you have, and see if there’s any difference. Because a lot fo times in the soft proofing process, it just gets to be muckety-muck, unless somebody really, really, really knows what they’re doing.

And again, since it is a JPEG and it’s in a smaller color space, doing a lot of color editing on that to get it to match, you know, you can do some damage to those pixels. Whereas, you’re not going to have that problem when you’re working with 16-bits and a TIFF and a larger color space. So I’m just saying, the soft proofing process, I think, is much more complex for making chromogenic prints than it would be for inkjet prints. I mean, definitely.

As you can see, you can’t just compare to applying that in soft proofing to a ProPhoto RGB, because that’s not accurate. It’s going to be a much smaller color space to get an optimal print, so you have to go through that extra step.

So in my opinion, I would not even soft proof it. A lot of times what people find with this is that it doesn’t make any difference and, in fact it can make things worse. I’m sure there are people that will have other experiences if they worked with one lab for a very long time and they’re very familiar with it, but it’s a major pain. Because you’ve got to go through that step. There’s no way to get an accurate soft proofing without changing it to an sRGB JPEG, because that’s what they want.

Justin: Yeah, that makes sense, I think, getting him set up on the right track in terms of the basics. I think we’ve clarified pretty well. Helps. It’s a good starting point, instead of just sending an image and not knowing what the heck’s going on. You explained it so he can understand what’s happening.

Renee: Right, don’t convert to the printer profile, ever.

Justin: Never do that.

Renee: Never, ever, ever do it, and just convert it to sRGB – that’s question one, and number two, when you compare it, you’re not really – I think when he says “Lab printer’s color space,” I’m presuming he doesn’t mean the profile. Interpreting that as the color space they want it in which is an sRGB, so again, it has to be soft proofed sRGB.

Justin: Yeah. And always check their website, I mean it sounds like he probably knows –

Renee: Right! That’s why a lot of these labs are very hesitant to turn over their profiles. Some of them refuse to do it, and I can certainly understand why. It’s a big technical support headache, because a lot of people are not – and I don’t know Bob’s situation – a lot of people are not that experienced at soft proofing and start, you know, really messing around with many different things, and it can really wreak havoc.

I just don’t like doing it, in fact I don’t even like doing it for inkjet prints. You know, I find if I have a really good profile and I’m doing the workflow correctly, I mean, I may take a look at it, but, you know, normally I get excellent prints – I prefer to just do a very small test hard print.

Justin: Yeah, yeah, that’s a good point.

Renee: So, anyway, if he has any other questions please leave comments, just ask more questions and I’ll try to clarify.

I did go over the soft proofing in Lightroom in a prior podcast with Otis’s question. It’s a lot easier to soft proof in Lightroom, so if you do have that application, that’s the way I would recommend doing it.

Justin: Yep, same here.

You know, I was just thinking that I get a lot of emails from listeners of the show afterwards – they’ll kind of reply to the email that we send out that’s announcing the podcast or whatever, and they’ll ask questions there. It’s best always to just leave a comment on the actual show notes, and we’ll give you that link at the end of the show.

Because Renee actually jumps in there and provides some insight – she’s awesome enough to do that for us. So make sure you post your comments to the show notes page.

Renee: I want to make sure everythings clear to people. I love to teach, I’ve done printing for many, many years. I used to work in the dark room, done platinum palladium printing, and I did tech support in my prior career in biotech, so, you know, I understand – I’ve been through all this myself.

It’s confusing to everybody when you’re starting out, and you have no idea when someone writes you, how experienced they are – and as I always was taught, never assume anything. You just can’t assume something you think you just take for granted after you’ve been doing something for fifteen years, someone else it might not be obvious to them.

But it is more complicated, you know, to soft proof for digital prints for that reason – you’re gonna have to make an sRGB JPEG, as I said, and then make a copy of the sRGB JPEG to make the edits for the soft proof with the lab’s profile, and I think it’s complex. Again, they’re so inexpensive, one that’s been soft proofed and one that’s not – see if there’s a difference.

Justin: Yeah, that’s a great idea.

Awesome, well I think we’ve covered that question pretty well, and that’s actually the last question that I have for you for this episode, so I want to thank you for taking the time to be with us today, it’s always awesome.

Renee: You’re welcome, it’s my pleasure. Thank you so much.

Justin: No problem, we’ll talk to you next time.

Alright guys, that’s it for today’s episode. Thank you so much for lsitening and for being a part of the show. For the show notes for today’s episodes, you can visit ask-bc.com/episode28.

Thanks again for all your questions, and for joining us today. We have compiled a massive PDF with all of Renee’s content that she has ever given us. All the podcast episodes, all of her articles, etcetera.

If you would like to receive this PDF, it’s pretty simple – take out your phone, and text the word “RBESTA” to the number 33444 and we will send you this massive PDF.

Also, if you enjoyed this show today, open up iTunes and find the AskBC podcast page and leave us a rating and review. We’d love to hear your feedback, and this really helps us improve on the show. If you would like to ask a question for the show, we’d really appreciate it. We’re always hungry for new questions.

It’s pretty simple, just visit ask-bc.com, and if we choose to answer your question on the air, we will mention your business name and website right at the beginning of the episode.

Thanks guys, see you next time!

[Music]
[End Audio]


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Apple 5K display review

Reviewing the new Apple 5K display, and a tutorial on converting images to sRGB JPEGs for soft proofing.

Most consumer-grade monitors won’t cut it for color-critical media editing, but expensive wide gamut monitors can be out of reach for many. So where does the Apple Retina 5K display, included with the new iMac, fit in? Professional photographer Renée Besta talks pros, cons, specs, and more on the new Apple display to pin down who would benefit from purchasing it, and who wouldn’t.

Later in the show, Renée lays out a workflow to soft proof sRGB JPEGs that were originally shot in ProPhoto RGB or Adobe RGB (written tutorial with screenshot for this process available in show notes).

  • Apple’s new 5K display – Specs, uses, pitfalls, & more
  • Why the new iMac can be a great deal
  • Why the new iMac can be a not so great deal
  • Colorimetric vs. perceptual rendering intents – There’s no hard rule on which to use
  • Why Breathing Color’s custom ICC profiles say to use perceptual, and why you can ignore this if you know what you’re doing
  • Converting a ProPhoto or Adobe RGB file to an sRGB JPEG to send to a lab for c-prints
  • Soft proofing – view in original color space or output color space?
  • Soft proofing sRGB JPEGs is harder than ProPhoto

Listen in to hear the Apple 5K display review and learn about soft proofing

Show Notes

  • Listeners featured in this episode include Dave Singh from STM Graphics, and Bob Nardi from BobNardi.com.
  • Full specs on the Apple 5K Display can be found here.
  • Download Renee’s additional information and resources from this episode including tutorials for converting ProPhoto/Adobe RGB images to sRGB JPEGs and soft-proofing in Photoshop or Lightroom by clicking here.
  • Check out Renee’s website at RenMarPhoto.com.
  • Love the show? Have some feedback for us? Leave us a review on iTunes.

Audio Transcription

Prefer to read over listen? Want to save this conversation for reference later? We transcribe all of our shows for these reasons! Download this episode’s transcription below:

Or, to view a web version of the transcript:


[Music]

Announcer 1: You are listening to the AskBC podcast – your printmaking questions, answered by the experts!

Justin: Hey guys, this is your host Justin, welcome to episode 28 of the AskBC podcast!

Special guest Renee Besta joins us today to talk about color reproduction with Apple’s 5K display, paper profile rendering intents,and soft proofing best practices.

Renee has made guest appearances here and on the BC blog a number of times. She is extremely knowledgable when it comes to color management, photography, and printmaking workflows and more. Be sure to check out her site at renmarphoto.com, and also you can use the BC blog search bar to find other articles by Renee if you haven’t already.

Without further adieu, let’s go ahead and jump into the show.

Announcer 2: Dave Singh with STM Graphics asks, “Regarding monitors, you never touched on the new 5K screen from Apple.” He asks, “How do you get an NEC monitor for an iMac?” Second part of his question is, “Also, in a previous episode regarding rendering intents, you stated that relative colorimetric is the best color space for output, however Breathing Color makes output profiles with perceptual rendering intent for Canon paper profiles.”

Renee: Okay, first of all. Good morning, Justin, and thank you so much for having me back.

Justin: Definitely.

Renee: This is a great question. I’ve actually had a lot of people write me independently, contact me via my website, about the 5K screen since I was so pro-NEC and talking about the Eizo monitors.

First of all, I’ve seen this – for people that don’t know or don’t use Macs, this is actually the new iMac that has a built-in 5K retina display. So i mean, there’s absolutely no question that this display is totally jaw-dropping when you go into the Apple store and look at it. You almost want to genuflect when you walk in the room. Everything looks very detailed, crisp, and life-like.

One thing I would say is that be aware that, you know, although this display looks awesome, it’s still geared mainly for people doing non-color-critical work.

So the answer is gonna be, it depends on your personal situation, and I’ll get into a little bit here on the specs and how those relate.

This is a 27” display, it has in-plane switching IPS technology, the resolution is 5120×2880, now that is an absolute huge number of pixels.

Justin: Crazy.

Renee: So, you have to keep in mind for optimal viewing and to really take advantage of a display, the source material that you’re feeding to it needs to kind of be up to the task. And if it’s not, it’s kind of like similar to watching an HD television set with an SD signal.

So, at that high of a resolution, your type size in certain applications may be really tiny, you may have to do some adjustments on your screen or in palettes of certain applications. They’re not all optimized for these types of displays, but it is, you know, an awesome display.

Now according to the specs, it covers about 100%, maybe 102% of the sRGB color space. So it’s not considered a true wide gamut display. Independent test results that I’ve read show about 79% of the Adobe RGB coverage. It’s also not back-lit like an LAD display, so you can keep that in mind.

But, you know, one thing, I’ve read phenomenal reviews on this, it’s a great computer. It’s a really nice display. But many of these reviewers are biased, and they usually diss all wide gamut displays as being completely unnecessary. And I understand why, it’s because most people doing image editing are usually just posting sRGB JPEGs on the web, or they’re having the more inexpensive digital chromogenic, or so-called c-prints made, sending out to a photo lab.

So then you really don’t need a wide gamut display, so that’s not a judgement or anything on my part, it’s just dependent on your particular situation. So these people are not going to do editing with the goal of fine art printing, ie: inkjet pigment prints, so they don’t really care or need a wide gamut display, so it depends – what are Dave’s needs and goals?

Is he making his own inkjet prints or sending them out to a lab just for c-prints?

Also, that display is still a super high-gloss screen that is still not optimal for photo editing, despite improvements that have been made to reduce some of the reflections.

I’ve commented before in articles that I’ve written and on podcasts, you know, with these types of displays, everything looks really super sharp and super saturated, but that does not mean the file itself is that way in reality, if that makes sense.

Justin: Definitely.

Renee: You know, matte screens are preferred always for color-critical work, which is why NEC and Eizo make matte screens.

For instance, I’ve found it difficult to apply proper sharpening to an image on a high-gloss display, they always look super-sharp anyway. Just because of, you know, you’ve got this dense layer of high-glass gloss there, so it’s just really, really hard to determine “It looks sharp,” and then you print and it’s not so sharp, so I really don’t like, for my purposes, using it.

But, you know, if your goal is just posting sRGB JPEGs to the web and you’re gonna send out to a typical photo lab, which will require an sRGB JPEG, that’s the optimal file spec for that type of printing, you know, it’s wonderful.

The graphics card can also support a second display, according to Apple, up to 4840×2160 pixels, so you can certainly add an additional NEC for color-critical work, and in fact, I’ve researched a lot of printing forums and many people are doing exactly that. Because it’s a really good deal – the computer itself is awesome, and when you compare it to the cost of buying Dell’s new UltraSharp 5K display, that costs about $2,200 for the Dell, so the retina iMac starts around $2,000. It’s kind of a better buy in that you’re getting a computer along with the display, and, you know, there are obviously upgrades that can be done to that iMac.

So, let me just go over some of the test results that I’ve read about this, when people have checked it out. Again, the gamut is just slightly larger than sRGB. The color-accuracy, they’re saying it’s not really great out of the box, of course it needs to be calibrated and profiled anyway.

But one of the things I have noticed is that the luminance, what some people call “brightness,” uniformity, is not so great. In other words, it’s gonna be brightener in the center than at the edges, and the color-accuracy, again, when you’re looking at a delta-E rating, not so great.

Again, it may be perfectly fine, I don’t mean, again, to come across as saying something negative about it – it depends on your needs and goals, but always with that type of display, that’s what you’re paying for in the really expensive NECs and the Eizos, is having color fidelity, color accuracy, the luminance being uniform corner-to-corner, top-to-bottom, left-to-right, center out to the edges.

So you just, at that price point, are not gonna get that with a retina display, despite how wonderful it looks.

So, basically, people see variations across the panel shifting towards yellow near the corners, and this is common. I wouldn’t mention it, except that I read this quite a bit, and some people have returned it for that reason. They did color-critical work. They enjoy how it looks, I mean obviously it’s great for videos and other applications, so, you know, again it depends on what he wants to do, but if you’re going to add an NEC, what I would definitely do is to upgrade the video card for it, so that it can drive a second display.

So Apple offers – it comes with 2GB of video RAM normally, you can update it to a 4GB card that’s slightly faster. So if you’re gonna add something like an external NEC, then you’re going to probably want to upgrade the graphics card as well to drive that.

So many people are doing that, I have seen people say “I bought it because it’s a great deal for the computer and the display for a lot of purposes, and then I have this external.”

It could even be a Dell, one of the Dell UltraSharps, that have a great – a wider gamut. Or an NEC. And they’re doing that for the color-critical work. So it’s an option. Depends on your needs.

Justin: Yeah, seems like a great solution. Yeah, definitely.

I think, you know, the Apple display will cover 80% of what one might use it for, and then the 20% you invest in something, you know, a display that’s designed for color accuracy, kind of like what you were saying – if you need that.

I’d say it’s a good solution.

Renee: Yeah, if you need it – are you doing inkjet printing, or are you just sending to a lab where sRGB is all you’re going to use anyway, then you don’t need to worry about that. And it is beautiful and it is a great deal, I think, for the price, like I said, compared to the Dell – you’re getting a computer and everything for starting at two thousand dollars.

Justin: Yeah, it’s not bad at all.

[Part 2 of the question]

Renee: I love these questions, because I get them all the time from students and people write me through my website.

First of all, I did actually not say relative colorimetric was always the best choice to use. I said the opposite – to test both perceptual and relative colorimetric, see what looks best to your eyes.

What I did say was that in most circumstances, I find relative colorimetric, for my situation, works well for me. Of course that’s because I print and I keep my files in the highest color space ProPhotoRGB 16-bit. Depends on the printer that you’re using, what its gamut is, you know, I went over – so you can relisten to that podcast what the differences are.

But you have to understand with the rendering intents and which one you use, it’s going to be very, very much image dependent.

I mean, some images don’t have that much color – period. They’re sort of flat. It depends on what colors are present, so it may not make any difference. It’s also very much printer and paper and profile-dependent. So the qualities of those, you know, make a difference.

Maybe on a certain paper with a certain printer using a certain profile, one will work better than the other. So you really do need to test, and you can do that by soft proofing.

Remember, taking a question from Otis from Indiana on the Lightroom proofing – you can just click different rendering intents and see which one looks better.

Another area of confusion here, when he says “Breathing Color makes a profile with perceptual,” that’s actually not the case. Just like all paper manufacturers, people think that they’re actually saying, “Oh, we made this profile using either perceptual or relative.” And it’s just not the case, because when you make a profile, as you know, all the color management must be completely turned off. That is how profiles are made.

You don’t want anything done – you’re printing out hundreds or, in some cases, thousands of target color swatches and then measuring them. You want them to print exactly as they’re going to print so you can see how they come out and then corrections are made in the profile saying, “Well it’s supposed to look like ‘this’,” because they’re comparing target numbers. Measuring how it prints, and then basically the profile is sort of a correction. That’s the best way I can put it.

Justin: Yeah.

Renee: So basically, the reason this is getting confusing is that in the instructions, Breathing Color and other paper manufacturers, it will say, normally, to choose perceptual.

Now sometimes I’ve seen with Hahnemuhle, it’ll say relative or with Museo paper, once in a while. But normally it’ll say in the instructions, “Choose perceptual.” And I think the reason for this, that manufacturers like to say that, is they feel that rendering intent is safer to recommend because perceptual is probably less likely to result in any strange, out-of-gamut type of color mapping.

Because what it does is compress everything, and, as I’ve said before, it reworks the in gamut colors, or shifts them, so that you have an overall – tries to maintain the “pleasing look,” if you will, of the image itself.

Where as with relative, you’re only sort of changing the out of gamut colors and mapping them to the nearest reproducible hue. So it’s kind of like safer to just say use perceptual, it’s like likely to result in any kind of strange-looking print, so that’ll result in less technical support issues, if you will.

So I think, I don’t know about you, I’m not saying that’s why you do it, I would just prefer manufacturers don’t say one way or the other, that they say “experiment – these are the two that are relevant to photo printing, relative or perceptual, test them.”

And that’s it, but just because it says that in the instruction, you know, ICC profiles are aware – let’s just say they’re aware of different intents, but you can apply them, but you can not possibly do that. You can’t even turn color management off in Photoshop any longer, and that became an issue for people I think starting in CS5, that that feature was removed, which ticked people off that were trying to, you know, make these custom profiles and print target images and want to turn it off. That’s the whole point, otherwise how are you going to know how something comes out when you print target swatches?

Justin: Right.

Renee: So it’s not something that you can even apply if you wanted to, so feel free, basically, to use whichever. Print with both or a soft proof using both and see what works best.

It is, again, very image-dependent. What works well with one image, you may want to use a different intent with a different image, or on a different paper. They come out differently.

Justin: Or a different printer, yeah. All depends on the gamut right? The gamuts at play.

Renee: Is there a reason – so I guess I’ll just ask you why you list perceptual in your instructions?

Justin: Yeah, kind of for the same reason you explained.

You know, I’ve always wanted to – or since I’ve learned enough to know what’s proper to do with rendering intents, I’ve always wanted to changed that to say, “It depends on the image, the printer, the paper.” You know, things like that.

But you want to talk about a tech support nightmare, I just feel like that would definitely be one. I think we should put the podcast link to where you first talked about rendering intents right in there somewhere, you know. I think that would be a pretty cool idea.

Renee: Yeah, or the show notes.

It depends on what working color space your image is in. I don’t know if it’s in sRGB, ProPhoto, Adobe RGB – it’s all going to therefor have an effect on the rendering intent. It’s there to map what the printer can not reproduce and decide what it does. It’s a decision – what does it do with out of gamut colors that will not print on a given printer on a given paper with a given profile.

Justin: Right, a lot of variables.

Renee: Exactly.

Justin: Moral of the story is soft proof with both, see what looks better.

Renee: That’s right.

Justin: Easy as that.

Awesome. Well, he didn’t really have a question there, he was just making a statement. Seems like he misunderstood you a little bit on that last podcast, but hoepfully that provides all the information he has, if he has more questions, certainly hope he feels free to comment on the show notes page.

Renee: Right absolutely, I would be happy to go in, I always address any comments or questions people have. But I think he’s just concerned because it says “BC mix output profiles with perceptual for Canon” so he’s a little concerned with, “Well, how can I use relative if you’re saying it works better?”

Well don’t worry about it, they don’t actually make a profile with a rendering intent, it just doesn’t exist.

Justin: Exactly.

Announcer 2: Bob Nardi from BobNardi.com asks, “I am sending out a print to a lab. If you have a profile for soft proofing, should you convert the image to that profile, or convert it to sRGB when sending the file in for printing? Secondly, when soft proofing, should you view the file with the original color space or use the lab’s printer’s color space?”

Renee: Okay, great question. There is a little confusion here on how to soft proof, and it is certainly a confusing process.

It’s one of the most commonly asked questions, always, and it certainly can mess you up if it’s not set up correctly.

People always get confused, and I remember a question from someone else on a prior podcast that said they’re receiving files from clients with embedded profiles, and I asked the question, “Well what embedded profiles?” Because I’ve seen this common mistake that people actually convert their image to the printer profile and you’re not supposed to do that.

So to answer that right off the bat, no, do not ever convert your image to the lab’s profile. It’s the same as if you’re doing an inkjet print, you don’t actually convert it – you have a color working space, which is a profile, it’s a working space profile.

Because when you do that, it’s going to permanently mebed that profile, and it makes it difficult to then do further edits to that image. So, those output profiles, printer profiles, whether it’s going to a lab to do chromogenic prints or an inkjet print, they’re going to be very restrictive, because you have to understand – I described it before like a funnel. You’re going from a really great, large color gamut and you go down, down, down as you go to print to a smaller one.

So, they’re only to be used, those printer profiles, to edit a duplicate copy of your image in order to get the best match to your original file when you’re soft proofing for print. And again, I would refer them to a prior podcast with profile embedding problems.

So I don’t really know…in camera, is Bob shooting JPEGs? Is he shooting in camera RAW? So I’d kind of like to know if he…here’s one of the problems, first of all, I have to presume that he’s making digital c-prints, because he’s talking about a lab and when you say “lab,” that’s normally what it is, so, those labs always, always want JPEGs in the sRGB space and that’s because if you use Adobe RGB or ProPhoto, the prints will come out horrible. It’s a completely different methodology. You’re using either a laser or LED to expose photosensitive materials, and they’re dye-based prints, so you can’t use that. They will have – the color gamuts smaller.

So I don’t know if he’s starting, and I don’t know, first of all, the Photoshop settings, okay? How are they set up? A lot of people don’t bother to configure their Photoshop color settings optimally for how they’re printing. Is it set as a default for the RGB working space to be ProPhoto? Is it set for Adobe RGB? sRGB? When you keep going through this editing process and if you don’t have the boxes checked to warn you if what you are opening is a mismatch to your default color space, it just could go ahead and convert it back and forth to one to the other and kind of really mess you up.

So that’s another thing to keep in mind. ProPhoto and Adobe are going to be optimal for inkjet printing because they have the greatest color gamut, but, again, for the digital c-prints, you’re going to ultimately have to convert it. That complicates the soft proofing, so I’ll get to that in a second.

But, I kind of want to back up and say – Bob didn’t mention what monitor he is using, and whether that is both calibrated and profiled. Now, that’s very critical for image editing and soft proofing. You’re never going to get an accurate soft proof or a print without doing both, and those are two completely different processes.

Calibrating is really setting the hardware to an optimal state – you’re going to set the luminance, or what people call the brightness, the white point, and the gamma (or tonal response curve), and then profiling is actually characterizing how it’s displaying particular colors. So that should be addressed first if you want to do accurate soft proofing.

And I also want to say, when you’re doing it – make sure always that you make a copy of your original – duplicate the image to do any edits.

So, you want to set up the screen. It’s best to…I mentioned this before with Otis’s question in Lightroom – and I don’t know whether he’s using Photoshop or Lightroom to do the soft proofing, it’s set up kind of different. But, there are ways to set up the screen so you can view your original edited image against a soft proof copy of that where you are applying the output profile, if that makes sense.

And then doing it – it’s to get the two to match, because, as I mentioned before, if you just take it and apply the printer profile – and I don’t mean convert it, I mean you’re simulating it.

And by doing that in Photoshop, you go to the View menu, down to Proof Setup, and over to Custom. And then it says “Device to simulate” and then you choose your destination profile, which would be the lab’s profile, that you’re going to be simulating. So that’s how it’s done. I know it’s a little complex. I can write the workflow in the shownotes, so don’t worry about that, but it will say “Device to simulate,” and that’s wheret you select it.

But you want to make sure that it’s a duplicate of what your original image is, otherwise you’re going to start making these changes to it, and, you know, you can really get messed up.

And it’s also like I said before, you may forget, sort of, in the proofing process, what the original image kind of looked like. So if you have that side-by-side with what you’re soft proofing, you can kind of compare and see what you need to do in terms of adjustments with the contrast, the hue saturation, luminance, you always need to open up the shadow details, so make sure you have a duplicate and view them side-by-side.

So as far as the second goes, when soft proofing – he has “Do I use the original color space or the lab printer’s color space?” by that I think he means, sRGB, ProPhoto, or Adobe.

Well, you have to, unfortunately, convert to sRGB, because that’s what the lab printer is going to want. So that’s why I ask – are you starting in camera RAW, starting with a JPEG, what are your Photoshop settings? Basically, let’s just assume he shoots camera RAW, and the default normally for a Lightroom, and camera RAW Photoshop is ProPhoto RGB, so that’s quite a bit different from an sRGB, so let’s just say you have it in that color space and you do a bunch of edits to your image and get it to the way you like.

Unfortunately, you’re then going to have to do a “Save As” convert that to sRGB, and to a JPEG. Then use that sRGB JPEG to do the soft proofing. So that’s like an extra step versus inkjet printing if that makes sense, because with inkjet printing I don’t have to do any of that, I’m gonna keep it in ProPhoto RGB because I’m gonna print it in ProPhoto RGB. I don’t have to then downgrade it, so to speak, to sRGB and to a JPEG, I’m gonna print a TIFF, or a PSD in ProPhoto, because that’s optimal for inkjet printing.

So, it’s a little confusing, because he’s gonna have ot make that extra stpe whether he uses Adobe or ProPhoto. Get those edits done the way he likes it, and then, again, duplicate the image or do a “Save As,” and it’s gonna have to be first converted to sRGB under Edit, Convert to profile, and then save it as a JPEG. Then you’re going to use the sRGB JPEG and duplicate the sRGB JPEG, if that makes sense, to soft proof side-by-side. You’re not going to then compare it to the ProPhoto version, because you’re not going to get an accurate soft proof.

It’s just a little bit, it’s more steps when you’re doing digital c-prints. I mean, you may think it should be simpler, it’s just a digital c-print. But because the lab wants it in sRGB as a JPEG and you’re probably starting in ProPhoto or Adobe on a TIFF or PSD, you have to, you know, convert it to sRGB and the file format to a JPEG because JPEGs are 8-bit and there’s compression used, obviously, for a JPEG, which will throw out some color.

So, if that makes sense, you can’t then take the big ProPhoto 16-bit TIFF and soft proof that because it won’t be accurate, does that make sense?

Justin: Yeah, it makes sense.

So if Bob is using a file that’s a TIFF that’s in ProPhoto, would it make sense for his first step to be to convert that color space over to sRGB and then do edits afterwards?

Renee: Well you want to get the file the way you want it as a ProPhoto 16-bit TIFF or PSD file – looking the way you want it. Then you’re going to duplicate it, or you can do a “Save As” – just duplicate the image, convert it to sRGB and save it as a JPEG. Then, using that sRGB JPEG, you duplicate that as well, okay? Because you’re going to be making edits.

And this is what I don’t like. One of the million things, and I’m sorry – I don’t mean to be in any way derogetory towards people that like to use digital chromogenic prints, but you have to do the soft proof edits on the JPEG, which means, you know what happens – depending on how many changes you make to that, you’re already working with an 8-bit compressed file in a smaller color space, so you can potentially, you know, have combing and histogram – it depends what you end up doing to it.

If it was me I wouldn’t even soft proof it, that’s my opinion. I would just send that sRGB JPEG out to the lab and, in fact, what I recommend people do, because they’re such inexpensive prints, is send the sRGB JPEG that’s not been soft proofed along with one that you have, and see if there’s any difference. Because a lot fo times in the soft proofing process, it just gets to be muckety-muck, unless somebody really, really, really knows what they’re doing.

And again, since it is a JPEG and it’s in a smaller color space, doing a lot of color editing on that to get it to match, you know, you can do some damage to those pixels. Whereas, you’re not going to have that problem when you’re working with 16-bits and a TIFF and a larger color space. So I’m just saying, the soft proofing process, I think, is much more complex for making chromogenic prints than it would be for inkjet prints. I mean, definitely.

As you can see, you can’t just compare to applying that in soft proofing to a ProPhoto RGB, because that’s not accurate. It’s going to be a much smaller color space to get an optimal print, so you have to go through that extra step.

So in my opinion, I would not even soft proof it. A lot of times what people find with this is that it doesn’t make any difference and, in fact it can make things worse. I’m sure there are people that will have other experiences if they worked with one lab for a very long time and they’re very familiar with it, but it’s a major pain. Because you’ve got to go through that step. There’s no way to get an accurate soft proofing without changing it to an sRGB JPEG, because that’s what they want.

Justin: Yeah, that makes sense, I think, getting him set up on the right track in terms of the basics. I think we’ve clarified pretty well. Helps. It’s a good starting point, instead of just sending an image and not knowing what the heck’s going on. You explained it so he can understand what’s happening.

Renee: Right, don’t convert to the printer profile, ever.

Justin: Never do that.

Renee: Never, ever, ever do it, and just convert it to sRGB – that’s question one, and number two, when you compare it, you’re not really – I think when he says “Lab printer’s color space,” I’m presuming he doesn’t mean the profile. Interpreting that as the color space they want it in which is an sRGB, so again, it has to be soft proofed sRGB.

Justin: Yeah. And always check their website, I mean it sounds like he probably knows –

Renee: Right! That’s why a lot of these labs are very hesitant to turn over their profiles. Some of them refuse to do it, and I can certainly understand why. It’s a big technical support headache, because a lot of people are not – and I don’t know Bob’s situation – a lot of people are not that experienced at soft proofing and start, you know, really messing around with many different things, and it can really wreak havoc.

I just don’t like doing it, in fact I don’t even like doing it for inkjet prints. You know, I find if I have a really good profile and I’m doing the workflow correctly, I mean, I may take a look at it, but, you know, normally I get excellent prints – I prefer to just do a very small test hard print.

Justin: Yeah, yeah, that’s a good point.

Renee: So, anyway, if he has any other questions please leave comments, just ask more questions and I’ll try to clarify.

I did go over the soft proofing in Lightroom in a prior podcast with Otis’s question. It’s a lot easier to soft proof in Lightroom, so if you do have that application, that’s the way I would recommend doing it.

Justin: Yep, same here.

You know, I was just thinking that I get a lot of emails from listeners of the show afterwards – they’ll kind of reply to the email that we send out that’s announcing the podcast or whatever, and they’ll ask questions there. It’s best always to just leave a comment on the actual show notes, and we’ll give you that link at the end of the show.

Because Renee actually jumps in there and provides some insight – she’s awesome enough to do that for us. So make sure you post your comments to the show notes page.

Renee: I want to make sure everythings clear to people. I love to teach, I’ve done printing for many, many years. I used to work in the dark room, done platinum palladium printing, and I did tech support in my prior career in biotech, so, you know, I understand – I’ve been through all this myself.

It’s confusing to everybody when you’re starting out, and you have no idea when someone writes you, how experienced they are – and as I always was taught, never assume anything. You just can’t assume something you think you just take for granted after you’ve been doing something for fifteen years, someone else it might not be obvious to them.

But it is more complicated, you know, to soft proof for digital prints for that reason – you’re gonna have to make an sRGB JPEG, as I said, and then make a copy of the sRGB JPEG to make the edits for the soft proof with the lab’s profile, and I think it’s complex. Again, they’re so inexpensive, one that’s been soft proofed and one that’s not – see if there’s a difference.

Justin: Yeah, that’s a great idea.

Awesome, well I think we’ve covered that question pretty well, and that’s actually the last question that I have for you for this episode, so I want to thank you for taking the time to be with us today, it’s always awesome.

Renee: You’re welcome, it’s my pleasure. Thank you so much.

Justin: No problem, we’ll talk to you next time.

Alright guys, that’s it for today’s episode. Thank you so much for lsitening and for being a part of the show. For the show notes for today’s episodes, you can visit ask-bc.com/episode28.

Thanks again for all your questions, and for joining us today. We have compiled a massive PDF with all of Renee’s content that she has ever given us. All the podcast episodes, all of her articles, etcetera.

If you would like to receive this PDF, it’s pretty simple – take out your phone, and text the word “RBESTA” to the number 33444 and we will send you this massive PDF.

Also, if you enjoyed this show today, open up iTunes and find the AskBC podcast page and leave us a rating and review. We’d love to hear your feedback, and this really helps us improve on the show. If you would like to ask a question for the show, we’d really appreciate it. We’re always hungry for new questions.

It’s pretty simple, just visit ask-bc.com, and if we choose to answer your question on the air, we will mention your business name and website right at the beginning of the episode.

Thanks guys, see you next time!

[Music]
[End Audio]


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The post Apple 5K Display Review and Soft Proofing sRGB JPEGs appeared first on Breathing Color Blog.

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