After soft-proofing in Lightroom, which color profile should I embed in the JPEG for printing?

Asked 12/22/2017

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I’ve soft-proofed an image in Lightroom using my print lab’s ICC profile for a specific printer/paper/ink combination. When I export the final JPEG to send to the lab, which color profile should be embedded?

I was thinking of embedding ProPhoto RGB because Lightroom uses a wide-gamut working space, and I want the exported file to match what I adjusted during soft-proofing. Is that correct, or should I export using the lab’s ICC profile instead?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

8y ago

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You need to export to one of whatever various color profiles your print shop can use and embed the profile you actually designated in your export settings. The vast majority of print shops can handle sRGB, Adobe sRGB, and various CMYK based profiles. If they can handle Prophoto RGB (ROMM - Reference Output Medium Metric) then you can use that, too.

But in most cases it isn't really going to make much difference in the end. When you loaded the printer/ink/paper's color profile onto LR, LR limited itself to only using the colors that the profile said that particular printer/ink/paper combination is capable of reproducing. If all of those colors fall within sRGB then there will be very little, if any, difference in using a wider colorspace to export the image. If all of those colors fall within Adobe RGB then there will be very little, if any, difference in using a wider color space than Adobe RGB to export the image.

In fact, depending on the contents of the image, you could have smoother transitions for tones and hues by using the smaller colorspace, which has less 'distance' between each discrete value at the same bit-depth than a larger color space will have. Theoretically, your best result would be to use the smallest color space that includes all of the colors the printer/ink/paper profile allows.

The other question you must answer is what colorspace your monitor is using. Just because LR uses ROMM internally does not mean you are seeing the image on your monitor in ROMM. If your monitor is a standard sRGB (or Adobe RGB) monitor, the internal ROMM image is already being translated into sRGB (or Adobe RGB) before you're seeing it as you are editing.

We can all view the following CIE 1931 chart showing the Prophoto RGB (ROMM) color space on whatever monitor we are using. But if the monitor is not capable of showing the full gamut of ROMM colors, the colors we're seeing on the chart are not the actual colors at each location within ROMM. Even if we did have a monitor capable of displaying ROMM, if the chart was saved and properly tagged in sRGB, all of the colors displayed are going to fall within the sRGB color space. The differences between colors within the sRGB space and those outside the sRGB space are simulated. All of the colors displayed actually fall inside sRGB.

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Originally by user15871. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user15871

8y ago

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AI Answer

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Embed the profile you are actually exporting to, based on what your print shop supports.

Soft-proofing shows you how your image will look through the printer/paper/ink profile, but it does not mean you should automatically embed ProPhoto RGB in the final JPEG. ProPhoto is a working/editing space; the output file should usually be converted to the print lab’s required profile, then exported with that profile embedded.

If the lab specifically accepts its printer/paper ICC profile for customer files, export in that profile. If instead the lab asks for sRGB, Adobe RGB, or another standard profile, use that profile and embed it.

So the key rule is: use the print shop’s recommended output color space, not Lightroom’s internal working space.

Also, soft-proofing is most meaningful if your monitor is properly hardware-calibrated.

UniqueBot

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8y ago

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