It’s very important to us that the prints you receive from us are what you expect to receive.

How can we be sure that you’re happy with our colour correction or retouching work on an image before we print it? Well, we can send you an image file (lower resolution than the final image so we can email) in order for you to view it on screen as it will appear when we print it. This is “soft proofing”. You’ll need to soft proof in two situations:

• When you’re editing images, to see how they’ll look when we print them.
• If we send you corrected images for approval, to see how they’ll look when we print them.

Soft proofing’s place in the colour management system can be seen in the graphic. For it to work, several conditions must be met, as we said when discussing our Monitor Test Image:

• You monitor calibration must be accurate (and active);
• The profile embedded in the image must be accurate;
• You must have Photoshop’s colour settings set up as we recommend;
• Photoshop must be set to soft proof using the correct output (printer) profile for the machine and paper (you can rely on our profiles!).

Click here for monitor calibration

Click here for Photoshop set-up: Mac / Windows

Click here for more about our lab profiles

1. Soft proofing so you can see how images will look after printing 

Let’s assume your monitor is calibrated and you’ve set up Photoshop. Now, to see how an image will appear when printed by us on Lustre paper (for example):

To see how this image will appear when printed on Lustre paper, go to View > Proof setup and choose <Queensberry Lustre> from the bottom of the list (where “Queensberry Lustre” is the name we gave our proof set-up – For how to install the Profiles and set up Photoshop to use them,(click here) for Mac (click here) for Windows).

Having selected a proofing profile you can now toggle back and forth between viewing the image in the document’s own colour space and the proofing colour space by selecting the second item on the menu (View > Proof Colours). A shortcut way is to press <Apple><Y> on Macintosh or <Ctrl><Y> on Widows.

When you’re viewing the image in proof colour mode the name at the top of the image window will change from “Queensberry.TIF @ xx% RGB/8” to “Queensberry.TIF @ xx% RGB/8/Queensberry Lustre”. This confirms that you’re viewing the image as a soft proof (mimicking the way the image will look when printed) and also shows which proof profile is being applied.

If you have accurately profiled your monitor using a colorimeter, and set up Photoshop correctly, the image on the screen should now look as it will after printing.

Click here for how you can verify that the system is working with the aid of our Monitor Test Image.

2. Soft proofing when editing

You do have the option of editing in proof mode. If so, just bear in mind that the file’s colour space remains the same. Photoshop is simply applying the output profile before displaying it on screen.

If you prefer not to edit in proof mode, you have two other choices:

• Toggle in and out of Proof mode (again using <Apple><Y> on Macintosh, or <Ctrl><Y> on Widows) so that you can check the appearance of the finished print.
• Open a second window for the same window, as in the graphic below: Window > Arrange > New window for [filename]

You can now set the second window to Proof mode and what you see there will be updated on the fly as you edit in the first window. This is particularly convenient if you have two monitors (but don’t forget – both must be accurately profiled!)

Whichever option you chose, you can check for any colours in the file that can’t be represented in the output colour space (View > Gamut Warning).