Color managed printing - don't soft proof, convert to profile?

[Picture North Carolina]

Is this good info, or just bad advice.

In this article here (http://yttrium.webserverdns.com/%7Ephoto/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=17&Itemid=33), this gentleman basically says when printing do not soft proof because it is too prone to error. As quoted here:

Now, when you open these copied files, you want to convert the profile on all of them to the printer’s profile. Soft proofing can be done, however between the Photoshop print dialogue, and the printer driver dialogue, many mistakes can be made. Converting to profile is the most idiot-proof way to go about this.
He says to (in photoshop) go to edit, convert to profile and before printing, convert the image itself to the printer profile. Then print.

This seems to be contrary to other stuff I have read. Any opinions?

Another side question. In soft proofing, when you set your soft proof profile and press ctrl-y toggling proofing on and off, in essence are you not doing basically the same thing as toggling a conversion to that profile on and off?

-Dan

[coreypolis]

thats the way I was raised to do it, and couldn't be happier with my prints.

I'll admit that it can have issues on matte papers though, but on my 4800 and ilford smooth peral it matches exactly every time

[tim]

All things going well it doesn't matter. The profile has to be converted some time, you can let photoshop do it, or you can let the print lab doing it. The advantage of letting the lab do it is if they've changed papers, or use different machine, the conversion will work fine. If you'd converted it to printer A's profile, and the paper's changed or they use a different machine, things won't work so well.

Personally I do my prints in Adobe RGb and let the print lab do the conversion, which works for me.

I'm not sure about the proofing stuff, you should really try it and see for yourself. If you convert to the printer profile it will likely look exactly the same on your screen, because before it's displayed it's converted to your monitor profile. If you soft proof you're telling it to make it look how it will when printed, which is different. This is a tricky area so don't trust what I say, try it and see :)

[Picture North Carolina]

Personally I do my prints in Adobe RGb and let the print lab do the conversion, which works for me.



My apologies, I should have been more specific. I am printing to an epson r2400 and currently working thru some CM issues.

-Dan