Mike Chaney's Tech Corner

I have my monitor calibrated and balanced to the point where soft-proofing glossy, semi-glossy and pearl papers are pretty much a perfect match to the final print.  However, when I use matte papers, there's almost no correlation between the soft proof and the printed result.  The prints are always significantly more washed out and dull compared to the soft proof.

(I'm using a Canon Pro-200 so I understand that dye inks won't yield the same as pigment inks.)

But my question revolves more around why such a major discrepancy between the soft proof and the print.  I would have thought that the whole profile/soft-proof mechanism would account for this and show me equally washed out and dull prints on the screen.  This occurs on Canon, Hahnemuhle and Red River matte papers.

Thanks

Soft proofing is never perfect.  In fact, I never use it because you never know whether certain colors are out of gamut for the printer, out of gamut for the monitor, or some combination of both.  In general, the worse the paper, the worse the soft proofing will be and matte papers simply cannot hold the color gamut and dynamic range that glossy and semi-gloss papers can.  With that said, I can't say that I've ever seen a drastic difference on just general images on matte paper.

Where did you get your matte profiles?  They can be more difficult to create due to the limitations of matte paper and some profiling tools are better than others at creating printer profiles for matte paper that have accurate forward and backward color transitions (LUTs).  Soft proofing uses a completely different LUT (look up table) to the one used to print.  To print, it uses the forward (AtoB) profile.  To soft proof, it has to use the reverse LUT and if that isn't as accurate as the printing version of the table, the soft proof may be off while the print is OK.

Regards,
Mike

I’m using the paper manufacturers’ profiles. Do you think it would be fruitful to put this issue to them?  The only reason I hesitate here is that it’s not just the one manufacturer.

If it's multiple manufacturers, the only other weak point is the monitor profile.  How was your monitor profile created and how accurate is it?

Mike

I don't see how a display profile that is OK for non-matt papers is going to limit how dull and washed out a soft proof for matt papers is going to look.

I think something else is going on here. Can you soft proof with some other application as see how it compares?

A link to one of your problem paper profiles might give us something to look at.


p.s. I was going to start a new thread, but, may as well tack it on here. In the Qimage soft proof display is there a shortcut or way to quickly toggle the soft proof display on/off? If not please add it to the wish list.

After some more prints this morning, I now think it is a manufacturer-specific issue.

As an example, prints on Red River Aurora White are noticeably washed out in comparison to the soft-proof and to other matte paper prints as well.  The Canon Premium Matte actually comes out spot-on to the soft proof and handles colors quite nicely.  A couple of Hahnemuhle papers I tried are in between:  not as good as the Canon, but better than the Red River.  I guess I can experiment with some of their sample packs, although I intend to write Red River on this.

BTW, my monitor (old Lenovo P32-u) was calibrated with the SpyderX system and as far as I'm concerned is spot-on for non-matte papers as well as the Canon Matte.  Couldn't be more satisfied with that end of it.  I use CaptureOne for editing, but QiU for the soft proofing.