I’m trying to get a 6 channel ICC Profile I created in I1profiler for my large format Giclee Printing to be available to softproof in Photoshop (I’m testing this on CS3,CS4,CS5 and Elements 6). Whenever I install the 6 channel ICC profile I’ve created I can’t seem to get it to show up in the menu:
I think/know it’s possible because I’m able to get driver profiles to show up from media manufacturers such as Moab, Museo, Hahnemuhle Fine ARt Papers, Ilford, Intellicoat/Migclee, Lexjet, Fredrix, Breathing Color, etc…
Quick & simple answer is that it just isn’t possible for any version of Photoshop to soft-proof any type of n-colour profile & as you’ve discovered, it won’t show up in the device to simulate list of profiles.
Back in the day, maybe 4 or 5 years ago, Gretag had a free plugin specifically catering to your exact dilema. The plugin was created so that users of ProfileMaker Pro 5.x could soft-proof their n-colour profiles from within Ps. I’ve never used it so I can’t tell you how effective it is or if it still works with Ps CS5 but I’m thinking it should as it’s still possible to use plugins that are more than 10 years old.
If you can’t find the Gretag plugin on the X-Rite site, let me know as I think I might have a copy of it floating around somewhere.
and yet there is a great solution to this problem in ColorCast, an optional tool available with ColorThink Pro.
ColorCast captures the color effects of multi-channel profiles and embeds them into normal RGB and CMYK device profiles.
It’s like this: start with an RGB profile like your normal working space, say it’s Adobe RGB. ColorCast calculates and embeds each of the 4 rendering intents of a (say) 6 channel profile right into the Adobe RGB profile.
You save the result and call it “proof 6 channel.icc” and Photoshop sees it as a normal ICC device profile. You can select it in Photoshop for soft proofing, choose any rendering intent you like and get great soft or hard proofing results.
It’s important that the file to be proofed in Photoshop is in RGB or CMYK (so, pre-separation). But in most client cases, this works just fine because they don’t want to be making the separations and their printers don’t want them to do it either!
