Soft proofing print colours in Vectornation by Zaweba

A bright blue on screen can come back from the printer dull and slightly purple. Screens make colour from light and presses make it from ink, and not every screen colour can be printed. Soft proofing in Vectornation by Zaweba shows, on your screen, how a design is likely to look when printed with a particular profile, so the surprise happens at your desk instead of at the printer.

Setting up the proof

View > Colour proofing > Proof setup picks a CMYK print profile from the ICC profiles installed in Windows. A profile describes how a particular press, paper and ink combination reproduces colour. Many printers can supply the profile they want you to use. Install it in Windows and it appears in the list, ready to choose.

Then turn on Proof colours. The view soft-proofs through Windows' colour engine, showing your artwork as the chosen profile would print it. Colours that the press can reproduce look much the same; colours outside its range shift towards what it can manage. Switch proofing on and off to compare, and adjust the colours that change too much.

Overprint preview

Overprint preview shows what happens where inks print on top of each other rather than one knocking out the other. It matters for trapping, for black text over colour, and for special inks such as varnishes and foils, where an overprint setting that looks harmless in the normal view can change the printed result completely. Turn it on before sending print files, and especially before any job that uses spot colours or finish layers.

Assign profile

Edit > Assign profile assigns a profile to the drawing. Use it when a file's colours are meant to be read against a particular profile, for example when you receive artwork prepared for a certain press, or when you are setting a drawing up for a known print condition. Assigning a profile is about how the numbers in the file are interpreted, so it is best done deliberately, at the start of a print job, rather than changed back and forth.

A routine before print

Get the printer's profile and install it. Set up the proof with that profile and work with Proof colours on during the later stages of the design. Check bright blues, greens, oranges and purples, which are the usual colours to shift. Turn on Overprint preview and check anything set to overprint. Then look at the separations preview for coverage and ink totals, run preflight, and export the print-ready PDF.

Knowing the limits

Soft proofing is only as good as the screen it is shown on. An uncalibrated screen can make any proof misleading, so if colour is critical, calibrate your monitor, view proofs in steady light, and ask the printer for a hard proof on the real paper. Treat the soft proof as a strong early warning rather than a promise.

Used that way, colour proofing removes most of the guesswork from print colour, and it does it with profiles and the colour engine already in Windows, without anything extra to install or sign up for.