Using Soft Proofing in Lightroom to make sure your Images aren't too dark when you export to the web

There's a common problem that you may have come across if you use Lightroom and share your images on the web a lot, especially if you're using your own website and it has a primarily white design. That problem is that when you post your images to your site, they suddenly look dark. There are two reasons as to why this can be. One is that it could be a colour profile mismatch. Lightroom works internally in ProPhotoRGB where as most people export JPEGS as sRGB for the web. If your calibration is off, this can introduce errors when converting between profiles. However, it's often simpler than that. It may just be a simple optical illusion. Because Lightroom's interface is quite dark, which works well for keeping the emphasis on your image while editing, it can make images that are slightly too dark look a little brighter than they would be when viewed against a white background. When you then go an export to the web and put your image on aright background, even though the levels in the picture are actually the same. This is simply the optical illusion caused by the differing backgrounds contrasting with the image.

In this video I take a look at using Lightroom's Soft Proofing feature, which is primarily thought of as a print preview tool, to check what your images will look like against a white background. One thing to be aware of is that, because you'll be watching this video against a white background, you probably won't see the effect in the video, but if you've ever come across this before you'll probably know what I'm talking about. If not, try it with your own images.

Anyway, I hope this video is useful. If you like this, please subscribe to my YouTube channel! And don't forget to sign up to the Newsletter.