Hard proofing prints

[Tim Shawcross]

I recently purchased a used R2400 and I've now started to print off some of my better shots with the intent of storing and documenting my photography (for myself and family mainly). I'm using Museo Portfolio Rag as my paper of choice for colour prints.

I've been struggling with soft-proofing and all the ins and outs of it - I'll probably document in a later thread! For the moment though, I'm interested in the possibility of doing hard proofs using a different paper. I've got some Moab Lasal Matte which is a much cheaper paper than Portfolio Rag. It has been described as a 'good proofing' paper. I cannot actually find any info on the net in regards to if people actually are using it (or any other papers) to proof printer output for more expensive fine art papers like Portfolio Rag.

Is this idea worth trying? Is it common practice? Whilst I know that obviously Museo's paper will have a different gamut and Dmax I'm wondering in terms of evaluating things like shadow detail a proof printed on Lasal Matte would be a better guide than using soft-proofing. Will it get 90% there? 95%? Or is will it be way off? (I assume it will depend on the image to some extent, but let's say for the average image.)

I'm mainly printing landscape images, so whilst most of the time I can deal with a little bit of colour deviation from what's on screen, I am much more sensitive to how shadows appear in prints.

What about photoshop printing settings for doing a proof this way. If I'm printing on Lasal Matte, but wanting to proof output on Museo, will I get the best results by just printing with the Lasal Matte profile (assuming that it behaves in a relatively similar way to Portfolio Rag)? Or should it be set to 'proof' (instead of working document) and then using Portfolio Rag's ICC profile as the proofing profile?

I know the obvious thing to do would be to hard proofs on the actual paper I'm using, but cost is a big issue for me as I have a lot I want to print and not a great budget to dedicate to it.

Thoughts?

Thanks

Tim

[Ken Allen]

If you profile both papers using similar method. Calibrating your monitor, and if you have the control adjust the white point to match the papers in a standard viewing condition will help your soft proofing to be more accurate.

I recommend having professional custom profiles made. Search for madman chan color profiles and you will find one good resource.

[John Rodriguez]

Using a cheaper paper to hard proof is common practice. Just make sure you have really good profiles (preferably custom) for both papers. Hard proofing is always better then soft proofing. The problem with soft proofing is you're asking your monitor to accurately display what will appear on paper, however printers now have a wider gamut then the most displays. So unless you're running a $5k monitor chances are the soft proof won't accurately reflect what you'll see out of the printer. Personally I get a better match without soft-proofing on my Apple cinema display, so I don't really do it anymore.