Can I save Photoshop’s soft-proof preview, including ‘Simulate Paper Color,’ to a file?
Asked 3/25/2015
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In Photoshop CS5, is there a way to export or save the soft-proof preview (Ctrl+Y) to a file, specifically with the ‘Simulate Paper Color’ effect included?
My goal is to make a paper print that visually matches an existing canvas print. A simple screenshot is not sufficient because I need a high-resolution file for printing. If Photoshop cannot save the proofed view directly, is there another workflow or software that can do this?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
11y ago
2 Answers
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This isn't really an answer to your question as asked, but it isn't really just a comment either. The "simulate paper color" option probably isn't going to do nearly what you want. It's a bit heavy-handed, to say the least, and while it can be occasionally useful for perceptual purposes when preparing an image, if you could manage to save it and print it to another medium, you'll find that your "whites" in the final image are a lot darker and more colourful than they are in the target image. The blacks/darks for matte media soft proofs also tend to get dragged up a lot higher than they should be when that option is active. Again, that's useful for perceptual purposes while working, but not terribly accurate.
Something I would try is taking a screen shot of white with the proofing option on, just so that you can sample the resulting colour. (If you try sampling directly from the image, you get the underlying real image colour, not the soft proof colour.) Somewhere between that colour and white there will be a colour that more-or-less accurately represents the medium the image was being proofed for; the average of that colour and 255,255,255 will probably be pretty close. Create a solid layer of that colour below your image, then set your image to one of the darken modes (multiply will probably be best). You may have to fiddle with the black point just a touch to get a good match.
Yes, it's all eyeballing, though you can use a screenshot of a soft proof and colour sampling through the info panel to assist you in the process. You should be able to get something that's indistinguishable to civilians, other than the fact that one picture has a canvas texture and the other does not. The only way I can think of to get numbers-accurate is to use a reflected-light colorimeter and test prints.
Originally by user38275. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user38275
11y ago
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Not really, and even if you could, it likely would not give the result you want.
From the community feedback, Photoshop’s “Simulate Paper Color” is mainly a visual aid for judging how a print medium may affect the image on your monitor. It is described as fairly heavy-handed and not something you should expect to turn into a new master file for printing on another medium.
If you saved that preview and then printed it elsewhere, your whites and blacks would likely be pushed in undesirable ways, especially for matte media. In other words, soft proofing is for previewing output behavior, not for creating a corrected image that should be reprinted on a different material.
A better approach is to soft-proof specifically for the paper/printer profile you will use for the new print, then adjust the image while viewing that proof, and print from the edited file rather than trying to export the preview itself.
So: there is no practical workflow here to “save the soft-proof preview” as a proper high-resolution print file, and using “Simulate Paper Color” as baked-in output is not recommended.
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