Digital Photographer's Software Guide - Bertemes - Net

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Virtual Proofing
If ever there was a “no-brainer” in the graphic arts world, virtual proofing is it. It is faster,
cheaper, and more accurate than conventional proofing. It requires no physical transportation
of paper on the back of a motorcycle through rush-hour traffic. It enables
convenient, collaborative viewing that brings all parties together—designer, pre-press,
agency, client, and sometimes even the photographer. People can zoom into pages at
pixel level, add their annotations, chat about them in real-time, and do all this from the
comfort of their own office or their holiday home in Hawaii. Worried about security?
It has encryption. Worried about the color? Good point; but the color management is
foolproof. And only a fool would refuse to embrace virtual proofing now that it has
reached a mature stage of development.
Photographers who care about the quality of their work as it finally appears in magazines,
brochures, catalogs, and so on should try to insert themselves into the virtual
proofing loop. All too often, a picture looks great as an inkjet print, but fails to impress
when it gets reproduced on other media. Virtual proofing can help everyone concerned
with a project have realistic expectations about the final quality of the output.
Note
A word about terminology—”soft” and “virtual” proofing are used interchangeably but
do not always refer to the same process. Soft-proofing can also mean non-color critical
proofing on an RGB display to check the components of a page to be printed. True
virtual proofing, by contrast, involves viewing CMYK simulations on a high quality,
carefully calibrated monitor. Output is taken from the RIP, which shows the exact effect
of using a particular printer/paper/ink combination, complete with trapping, and
accompanied by the job ticket containing all the appropriate metadata. Virtual proofing
aims to be a true WYSIWYG representation of the final output.