They require you to know, and be able to find, the correct printer profile for your printer and paper.
These Soft Proof settings inform Photoshop how to display colour on our screens, giving us a reasonable idea of what will happen when we print. The gamut will be smaller in some areas, and larger in others. Your display, especially if it isn't a wide-gamut display, will have a very different colour gamut than your printer. Unless you have set these up for your own printer profile conditions they are most likely causing your images to be viewed using your Working Space ( sRGB or Adobe RGB, etc.), which will often be very different than your printer. Next move on to set up the Viewing (Soft Proof) conditions. Check the Photoshop Color Settings menu, which will set up basic Colour Management policies, which can be overridden for individual images. Start with Photoshop using the Color Settings menu. Photoshop and Lightroom are definitely the best for soft proofing. However, you need to be aware that images may display differently in other apps because of different technologies 'under the hood'.
This article is based on Photoshop, but please use it as general advise for other professional photo editing apps. Photoshop Settings, especially 'Soft Proof' Please bear in mind that your display uses very different technology than your printer to show your images transmitted (radiated) light versus reflected light, different pigments, and a very different colour gamut, and also much higher contrast, etc., etc. None of these can be influenced by the printer, or the printer's ICC profile(s). It has no idea what the display is showing! Indeed, the display has a lot of variables brightness, gamma, colour temperature, technology used, etc. Using a different 'path', the printer will print this image from the computer's drive, and NOT from the display, using a Printer ICC Profile. (Photoshop, etc.), it may be displaying the image using the Working Space Profile ( Adobe RGB, etc.), which is (hopefully) showing the image as it actually looks, while sitting on the hard drive, which may NOT be how it will appear when printed!
Depending on your 'Soft Proofing' settings in your photo-editing app. The display's calibration will have an enormous effect on this. It will be using its Monitor ICC Profile, via the image editing application, to do this. It is not even in the same data 'path' as the printer! The image is displaying the pixels of the image which is held on the computer's (hard) drive. The monitor is just an LED panel in a frame, with some electronic circuits and a cable (or two) connecting it to the computer. The popular myth is that the display is in control of colour and the printer. Just what is happening in the Colour-Managed 'flow'.
In fact the best way to troubleshoot, is to first check your Photoshop, Lightroom, etc. However the display, especially when it is properly calibrated, can be told, with help from Photoshop, Lightroom or other professional image editing 'apps', what the printer is doing, by means of 'soft proofing'. There is no way with Colour Management, computer, display and printer technology for the printer (and its ICC profiles) to know what the display is showing, or what your print viewing conditions are whether you view your prints under ultra-bright lights, or in a dark cave! It can also be that the prints appear to have a colour 'shift' compared to the display.Ī variation of the question to us is 'Can you make my printer match my monitor?' The answer to the questions is that the display should be adjusted to match the print! The usual concern is with prints appearing darker than the display. Colour Management - How It Works Are My Prints Too Dark - or is My Display Too Bright?Ī very common question to all colour experts, and asked almost everyday on many a photographic internet forum, is 'why don't my prints match the display?'.