tips of proofing for a photobook

[egosbar]

hi all

after cramming photoshop study over the last 2 years ive gone back into photography , purchasing a nikon d7100 , 55-300, 18-55,11-16 tokina and a 50mm 1.8 i can cover most shots

im doing a 52 shot challenge to themes given on a nikon forum , im going one step further and doing these relating to golf as my son is looking too turn pro this year and we are both sacrificing a lot to try to live the dream

his coach since he was 15 has never charged him and he believes he can play and win a british open one day , he is 24 now and after 5 year layoff where he went partying and didnt play golf he is back better then ever , training hard over the last 12 months , no drinkning smoking drugs or ******** for either of us

so we travel up to 1500 klm per week to compete , talking about the photography themes he suggested we put the photos into a photobook for his coach for xmas , so far i have four shot themes completed and 48 to go buy ill get plenty soon

my question is what are the tricks and tips for proofing for print in photobooks , what ive done is use select proof color , tick gamut warning and get rid of the grey areas by lowering vibrance exposure etc etc , i also tick shop simulat paper color in custom proof set up and the rendering intent is set to perceptual , not doing much printing any advice would be great , i want them to have punch and not look washed out heres the shots so far and themes used which are named in file

CLOSE UP , DEPTH OF FIELD , SILHOUETTE , LEANING

 

[egosbar]

I definitely need a calibrator , something around 100 dollars would be good , or are there some good online ones that work

 

[egosbar]

could someone with a calibrated screen tell me if the colors look right please

 

[Tom Mann]

Hi Ego -

On my calibrated, one-year-old, wide gamut NEC monitor, your colors and tonality certainly are very reasonable. Although I would have made slightly different artistic decisions, I see nothing overtly wrong with either the colors or tonality of these pix. About the only technical aspects that I think need attention are:

a) The colors and tonality of the putter image do not match those aspects in your image titled, "-depth-field-jpg". I prefer consistency, so I would probably tweak the putter image to match your "DoF" image, as I consider the putter image a bit cold and darker than I would prefer.

a) On the image with the clubhouse, it looks like you up-rez'ed a lower rez version, so the image looks very soft -- I would never submit it this way. However, my guess is that the versions that you posted here are not the full rez versions, and those probably look just fine.

b) On the silhouette image, there is a small sharpening halo. Again, I presume this isn't present on the full-rez version.

As I mentioned above, everyone has slightly different artistic preferences and goals, so I would have processed these images slightly differently. Below are three GIF animations to illustrate the directions I would have gone with these images. You'll probably immediately notice the vignetting I intentionally introduced in the 2nd and 3rd images in this post. I think that a bright center tends to keep the viewer's eye where you want it, not wandering out of the frame, but this is again, a personal preference.

Note, because I was working with relatively low rez, previously processed JPGs, the tweaking I made introduced some artifacts (eg, banding in the sky of the silhouette, noise and diffusion introduced in the process of making the reduced palette GIFs, etc.) that clearly wouldn't have occurred if you had processed the originals with these goals in mind right from the start. If my tweaks appeal to you, and you are interested in discussing them more, just let me know -- they are just suggestions based on my own artistic preferences.

HTH,

Tom M


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[egosbar]

thanks tom , your input it definitely appreciated , the images look fine at 100% in full res so must be an upload thing , i think using the gamut warning protects against over processing i actually like it now

 

[egosbar]

heres a link to my themes and ideas , feel free to suggest any , i have ideas against some of them but happy to explore new ones , there are a few im still struggling to come up with but ill get it at some point , i can also substitute five themes for my own so any thoughts on new themes that i can do would be great

http://nikonites.com/project-52-s/27957-egosbar-project-52-a-3.html

 

[egosbar]

Hi Ego -

On my calibrated, one-year-old, wide gamut NEC monitor, your colors and tonality certainly are very reasonable. Although I would have made slightly different artistic decisions, I see nothing overtly wrong with either the colors or tonality of these pix. About the only technical aspects that I think need attention are:

a) The colors and tonality of the putter image do not match those aspects in your image titled, "-depth-field-jpg". I prefer consistency, so I would probably tweak the putter image to match your "DoF" image, as I consider the putter image a bit cold and darker than I would prefer.

a) On the image with the clubhouse, it looks like you up-rez'ed a lower rez version, so the image looks very soft -- I would never submit it this way. However, my guess is that the versions that you posted here are not the full rez versions, and those probably look just fine.

b) On the silhouette image, there is a small sharpening halo. Again, I presume this isn't present on the full-rez version.

As I mentioned above, everyone has slightly different artistic preferences and goals, so I would have processed these images slightly differently. Below are three GIF animations to illustrate the directions I would have gone with these images. You'll probably immediately notice the vignetting I intentionally introduced in the 2nd and 3rd images in this post. I think that a bright center tends to keep the viewer's eye where you want it, not wandering out of the frame, but this is again, a personal preference.

Note, because I was working with relatively low rez, previously processed JPGs, the tweaking I made introduced some artifacts (eg, banding in the sky of the silhouette, noise and diffusion introduced in the process of making the reduced palette GIFs, etc.) that clearly wouldn't have occurred if you had processed the originals with these goals in mind right from the start. If my tweaks appeal to you, and you are interested in discussing them more, just let me know -- they are just suggestions based on my own artistic preferences.

HTH,

Tom M

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Tom when i try to get those sort of colors and contrast i have plenty of gamut warning , im trying to get the images as close as i can to go to print , that way i wont be dissapointed when the book comes back , how far can i push the warnings

 

[Tom Mann]

Hi Ego -

First, you've got to take the OOG warning feature of PS with a major grain of salt. As I recall, it was one of Adobe's very first (ie, oldest and crudest) attempts to provide photographers with a clue that they may have OOG problems. Personally, I use this tool only to quickly point out where to look for problems, not how bad they actually are. For example, the OOG warning tool can be terribly misleading in that it shows that some huge area of the image is OOG, but when you look at the problem in more detail by repeatedly hitting cntrl-Y to toggle "Proof Colors" on and off, you see that although the area might be big, the amount by which it's OOG is miniscule. The latter is the way you should evaluate possible OOG problems.

For example, if you look at my tweaked version of your "clubhouse with turbulent sky" shot, the default OOG warning area is huge -- much of the green foreground. However, if you turn off that warning, and instead, simply toggle proof colors, even with just the default soft proofing setup ("working CMYK"), you'll see that the change in the greens because of being OOG is just about completely negligible. Similarly, if you look at my tweaked version of your silhouette shot, you'll see that the areas of concern are very small (only the most deeply saturated regions of the clouds). In this case the amount of change is more substantial, but since it's only in a small area, and, for all the viewer knows, this could have been the way the clouds actually looked. I wouldn't worry about my versions being OOG, especially if you use "perceptual" rendering.

Second, you have to realize that most short-run book printers are not using offset presses, but rather, fast inkjets that have more than 4 inks, giving them a vastly larger gamut than traditional 4 color (CMYK) offset presses. So, unless you obtained and set up a custom ICC profile from your printer, but, in fact, are only relying on PS's default "working CMYK" soft-proofing setup, you are likely being much too conservative. Some of the modern inkjets actually have gamuts larger than sRGB -- more like Adobe RGB.

BTW, here's the URL of an article on soft proofing that I rather like:
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/soft-proofing.htm

Third, if, for some reason, you really don't like how the perceptual rendering intent deals with the OOG areas, the absolute worst thing you can do is to dial back the saturation and contrast of the entire image. That will make everything go "blah". Instead, if you really insist on handling these areas yourself (instead of relying on the mapping done by perceptual rendering in a "convert-to-profile" step), make a feathered selection of the OOG areas and only dial them back a bit, not reduce the saturation and contrast of the entire image. Personally, I probably have had to resort to this on only a tiny fraction of my product photos, and then, the solution was usually to add a spot color ink for printing these areas, rather than attempting to find some global fix.

For my tweaked versions of your pix, I strongly suspect you would be perfectly happy if you do nothing more than get an ICC profile from your intended printer, and then do an "edit / convert to profile (advanced)" using "perceptual" rendering intent and black point compensation. Obviously, you can't do this from the GIFs I've posted (because they only have 256 colors + noise dither, and were down-rez'ed), but I'll be happy to put them in Dropbox and send you the link.

With respect to your email, I'm sorry, but I've got a bunch of paying projects going on and just don't have the time to do this for you. You obviously have a decent monitor, a good pair of eyes and a basic knowledge of what to look for, so I think you'll do it just fine yourself.

HTH,

Tom M

PS - Obviously, producing a book is a major undertaking in terms of both time and money, so, as you pointed out, you don't want to run into unforeseen problems. One very good approach to this is to ask your intended printer if he will run off a couple of test pages for you to test for gamut and other potential problems.