Soft proof and export with embedded profiles

[Erik Brammer]

Hi Nik,

I have recently thought about a way how to minimise the effort of soft proofing for an output device such as silver halide imaging + developing or an inkjet printer, ideally straight out of Raw Power. But if I am not mistaken, there is currently not an option for that in Raw Power, correct? Along with a soft proofing capability, it would be useful to embed an output ICC profile right in the export function.

That way one could simulate what an image would look like on a printer/paper combination and create a print-ready JPG or TIFF with the embedded output profile.

Have you thought about this yet?

Best regards,
Erik

[Nik Bhatt]

Hi Erik,

I have thought a little bit about soft-proofing but not much. The basic idea is pretty simple – it’s a matter of changing the output color profile used when rendering images for display or output (but there are some gotchas that have to accounted for or the results will be incorrect). Embedding a profile is also straightforward.

It’s not on my near-term list, but it is something that is on the list for a future release. There are some very important (and large) features that are taking priority.

[Erik Brammer]

Thank you, Nik!

I can see how there are many other features that are being asked for by more users.

Maybe other users reading this have an advice on how to go about soft proofing out of Raw Power? My workaround would be the Preview application of Mac OS X. Of course there are other raw converters or photo editing applications that allow soft proofing, but my goal would be not to use anything but Raw Power.

Best regards,
Erik

[Nik Bhatt]

Hi Erik,

I cannot think of a way to do this with the current app. Sorry.

–Nik

[Erik Brammer]

I think I will just export from Raw Power as a 16 bit TIFF in ProPhoto RGB, open this in GIMP or even just the ColorSync utility and the conversion there. For the rather few images where I need to do this conversion, this approach should work.

[Nik Bhatt]

Sounds like a good plan to me, in lieu of a proper feature in the app.

[Erik Brammer]

I looked into this matter again. So ColorSync remains a good choice for post-editing profile embedding. Preview can be used for soft-proofing post editing. GIMP appears to offer soft-proofing while editing. So A possibility is to do most editing in RAW Power, export as 16 bit TIFF ProPhoto RGB or AdobeRGB and then check the expected print output including out of gamut colors in GIMP. I will try that when I will have my next larger format print made.

[Author]

Posts