Correcting Out Of Gamut Colors

[Scottes]

I was getting a photo ready to print yesterday and checked the out-of-gamut colors and almost the entire pic turned gray. There was a lot of grass in the scene and the greens were too saturated I guess. So I unchecked OoG and did a soft-proof, and sure enough the greens dulled down a bit.

So my question is: Why fix out of gamut colors if they'll get "fixed" when they print anyway? I mean, there's not much I can do if the printer can't print such a bright green, right?

Also, what's usually the best way to fix them before I send it to print? Just lower saturation? Is there a way to select the OoG colors so I can lower saturation on just those?

Any hints or tips or pointers are greatly appreciated. I don't necessarily think this is worth the time or money for yet another PS book - I don't need things perfect, just pretty close.

 

[kiwi]

As for the printers end I dont know enough about that to comment



For out of gamut colours I use the sponge tool set to desaturate and my Wacom pen,by gradually reducing the sat with the pen I find I can keep as much saturation as possible in other areas.You could probably also use the Histroy brush and a snapshot,reduce the sat then paint back in again as well,should work,I think.

 

[Erik]

My "shocking" view on his matter: No app, not even photoshop manages to show CMYK on a monitor, not even Photoshop.
What you see is an approximation using RGB. Usually sRGB which cannot show the full cmyk range, but which, when you work in it, offers many colours CMYK cannot reproduce.

Add to this the many reasons why a qaud print is never correct -if it isn't the humidity of the air, then it's the condition of the rubber blanket or a paper that reacts differently etcetc- and Out of Gamut is reduced to what it really is, and what you devined: a helping tool that makes you aware of your sins against CMYK colour space.

What I like a lot in Photoshop is that you can open two copies of one and the same image. First you have the duplicate command which offers you a second copy that you can zoom into whilst keeping the first one at full size, and then you have what's important here:
Window>New Window.
Whatever you do on the first, you do on the second. Except for one thing which is the only use I ever found for it:

There are many reasons to always work in Adobe RGB mode when working for print. The disadvantage is that Photoshop will show you a result that is far richer in colour depth and hue than the result in CMYK. You can of course use Ctrl/Cmd+Y to see the Proof Setup for CMYK. This shows you, within the limits of RGB, what the result will be. But toggling between both means that you need a *very* good sense for colour to remember what you saw.
And here comes New Window. (finally!).
With New Window, you can set the first image in Adobe RGB, and the second one to your Proof Setup (set to working CMYK, meaning that Europeans will use Eurocoated in their colour handling (see Edit) whilst people from tother regions will use something else).

So now you can use saturation, curves, even the channel mixer and colour balance to enhance your cmyk-simulation in the second pic, and automatically your first, original, Adobe RGB version will be set to accept the same changes.

But the printed result will always differ, and never meet your standards of perfection. (cough)

 

[tranquil222]

Wonderful piece of advice, Erik! Thanks!