Today’s Question: I realize my printer can’t necessarily print all colors that might appear in a photo or be seen on my monitor display. But is there a way in Photoshop to find out which colors in a photo my printer won’t be able to print, if applicable?
Tim’s Quick Answer: Yes, you can see an indication of which areas of a photo contain colors that can’t be reproduced by your printer configuration by using the gamut warning feature for soft proofing.
More Detail: The soft proofing feature in Photoshop enables you to see a preview on your monitor of what a print will look like based on a profile for the printer, ink, and paper combination you’ll use.
One of the features associated with soft proofing is the gamut warning display, which indicates areas of an image that can’t be reproduced with the intended printer configuration. Note that this requires you to have a profile for the output conditions, which generally means an ICC profile for the paper you’ll be printing with and the printer you’ll be using. These profiles can often be obtained from the paper manufacturer.
The first step is to enable soft proofing for the image. So, with the image open in Photoshop go to the menu and choose View > Proof Setup > Custom from the menu. In the Customize Proof Condition dialog select the applicable ICC profile from the Device to Simulate popup. I recommend setting the Rendering Intent popup to “Relative Colorimetric” unless you have a reason to use a different option when printing, and I recommend turning on the “Use Black Point Compensation” checkbox so that black in the image will be mapped to black in the profile.
I also suggest turning on both the “Simulate Paper Color” and “Simulate Black Ink” checkboxes if they are available for the selected profile. When you have configured the settings, click the OK button. The image will now appear different, providing a simulation of what the final print will look like. Keep in mind that there are inherent limitations involved with previewing a print that depends on reflected light on a display that uses emitted light.
Once you’ve enabled soft proofing, go back to the View menu and choose Gamut Warning. This will cause an overlay to appear on all areas of the image that have colors that are beyond the capability of the printer configuration based on the selected profile. This overlay is gray by default, but you can change the setting on the Transparency & Gamut tab of the Preferences dialog.
Based on this preview you can either choose to print on a medium that will have a wider color gamut, such as a glossy rather than matte paper, for example. You can also attempt to apply adjustments to optimize the photo based on the output limitations. Or, of course, you can simply use this as an informative or evaluative tool, so you have a better sense of what to expect from the print before committing ink to paper.
