Production has now paused for a wee Christmas break. We will resume on Mon 6th Jan 🎅🦌🎄

ICC Profiles and Soft Proof

This page provides the download link to the ICC colour profiles for all media types we are using.

Printing is hard. The final quality depends on such a wide range of external factors that sometimes even the same digital file printed a few hours apart would end up visibly different. Temperature, humidity, air pressure, normal fluctuation in the materials all bring uncertainty to the final result.

This article provides all the information you'd need for soft proofing. If you want precise control over the the final prints, please contact us and we'd be more than happy to work with you to produce physical proofs for your work.

One of the proof sheet we produced for photographer Georgina Skinner
One of the proof sheets we produced for photographer Georgina Skinner

ICC Profiles

Colour profiles last updated at 23rd July, 2018. Please click the following links to download them from our Dropbox account.

How to use Color Profiles in Soft Proof

Before start with the soft proofing process, you may want to double check that the monitor calibrated and profiled correctly. 80% of the proof issues come from incorrectly calibrated screens. Adobe has a short guide on Calibrate and profile your monitor. For more detailed discussion, we recommend this 6-page PDF document from x-rite, the manufactor for monitor calibration hardwares.

To install the color profiles, download them into Photoshop's profiles folder. In Windows, it's located in WINDOWS\system32\spool\drivers\color and in Mac, In Mac OS, the folder is at /Library/ColorSync/Profiles. After installing color profiles, be sure to restart Adobe applications.

The following two screen shots show the steps to use the color profiles in your soft proofing process.

Photoshop > Views > Proof Setup > Custom
Photoshop > Views > Proof Setup > Custom
Device to Simulate
Select the product you want in the "Device to Simulate" dropdown.

Please make sure that the following settings are selected.

  • "Preserve CMYK Numbers" is unchecked.
  • Select "Perceptual" for Rendering Intent and
  • Uncheck "Black Point Compensation"
  • "Simulate Paper Color" is checked.