COLOUR SPACE

1 Examine the colour mix

Load our processed image into the Develop module. Move the cursor around the image; you’ll see that the RGB values below the histogram change. The sampled dark blue sky in our grab is created by a mix of 28.2% Red, 34.7% Green and 50.4% Blue, for example.

3 Activate the gamut warning

To discover which colours won’t print correctly, click the Destination Gamut Warning icon at the top-right of the histogram window. Any unprintable colours will turn red. Here you can see that the darker blue pixels and some of the greens and yellows are out of gamut.

5 Adjust the saturation selectively

Click the Saturation section of the HSL panel, select the Targeted Adjustment tool icon, click the sky’s red patch and drag downwards to desaturate the colour. The Blue slider will slide left and the patches will vanish. Sample and desaturate the patches in the grass.

2 See a Proof Preview

To get a better idea of how the photo will look when printed, click the Soft Proofing button. The white backdrop represents the paper border around the print. The area below the histogram shows numerical values for each colour RGB colour channel, rather than a percentage.

4 Create a Proof Copy

You may want a version of the image to be seen online, as well as one suitable for print. Click Create Proof Copy. You’ll now have two versions of the photo in the Filmstrip. To desaturate the unprintable blues without changing the other colours, go to the HSL tab.

6 Change the colour profile

Alternatively, you can change the photo’s Colour Profile menu from the default sRGB (standard RGB) to the print-friendly colour space of Adobe RGB (1998) to force the Proof Preview’s colours to conform to a printable range without the need to make selective adjustments.