Enhancing the soft proofing paradigm

Abstract

The first part of this study is devoted to assessing the suitability of soft proofs as a surrogate for the final print in judging colour-reproduction quality. Two sets of psychophysical experiments were carried out. The first investigated whether the type of medium used to generate a stimulus influenced its appearance, while the second attempted to determine whether judgments made on the basis of hardcopy simulation are transferable to prints. The second part of this study is devoted to improve the accuracy of soft proofing by increasing the amount of information rendered on screen. We present a workflow that extends traditional colorimetry beyond simple colour appearance prediction to a higher dimensional representation, which includes gloss. The intention is to provide a full goniometric simulation of the spatial distribution of light reflected by a print based upon data gathered with simple and inexpensive instruments, glossmeters and spectrophotometers.