I have just purchased a Canon Pro9000 Mark II and I am using Ilford Galerie Smooth Pearl as my media. I have profiled my monitor (HP LP2475W) and also the printer media/ink. I am now trying to soft proof an image in CS5 prior to printing (I selected my printer profile and have relative colorimetric, simulate paper white and black compensation on). The problem I have is that with simulate paper white on my soft proof looks quite blue compared to the non soft proofed image. I assume that is due to the brightners in the paper which the soft proofing is trying to emulate. Am I better off adjusting the soft proofed image without paper white turned on? If I keep it turned on and then try to use curves to correct for the blue caste produced by turning on paper white I seem to have to make large curve adjustments and even then I cannot get the softproofed image to match the non soft proofed image. As you can tell I am getting in a mess with this and do not know what is the correct way to proceed. Helpppppppp!!!
Ahh, the joys of printing/proofing/profiling/ICC when trying to use papers with high amounts of optical brighteners. And Ilford Smooth Pearl definitely has a decent amount of OB in its construction which causes so many headaches.
What profiling package are you using to create your profiles & what hardware are you using to read the patches? Are you using some sort of UV cut filter or straight readings? Spectral or Lab? If using ProfileMaker Pro 5.x did you try the Optical Brightener Compensation?
Really, the best thing I can suggest is to find another paper which contains zero optical brighteners or as little as possible. This is just one of the reasons why many try to avoid papers containing OB. There are a great many papers on the market which contain no OB yet still have a very crisp, bright, punchy white & not yellow looking at all. Many of the Baryta fibre papers have no OB & a beautiful clean shade of white.
If you are using a patch reading app that allows spectral measurements it is quite easy to check for yourself to see which papers you use contain OB by checking the spectrum graph for paper white & seeing if the blue end of the spectrum is going over 1.0 reflectivity.
With or without OBA’s in the paper, that simulate paper white option is problematic. We usually recommend that people don’t use it. Because of our eyes’ ability to adapt to different light sources, your eyes will generally be thrown off by the other white elements on your screen that aren’t part of the soft-proof. Your eyes “know” what white on the screen looks like and when you simulate paper white and the image is darkened, our eyes & brain exaggerate that difference. (What you’re describing as bluer, might be the normal bluish-white of the paper, darkened a bit?)
To use this feature properly, you would really need to eliminate all palettes and borders in Photoshop, enlarge the image to fill your screen, give your eyes a few minutes to adjust to the display before you come to any conclusions, and then it might be workable as a paper simulation soft-proof.
Or you can just do without.
Other than that, your settings all sound fine. Black point compensation is always good to use when you have the ability to use it.
Sorry for the delay in thanking you but I have been unwell for a while. Your comments and advice have been much appreciated 