Disappointing flat image after soft proofing in Lightroom

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Ron
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I want to send an image off to get a large print made and so downloaded a colour profile for the relevant paper from the print bureau - DS Colour Labs.

Venice - First Light

But when soft-proofing in Lightroom the image just looks washed out and very flat. I've been messing around with the contrast, saturation and vibrancy to improve things but it all seems very hit and miss and not at all satisfactory and I'm not getting anything that resembles the image on-screen.

I wanted to have it printed on a Fuji Velvet flat matt paper.

What might I be doing wrong? Is it my choice of paper? Or me being a complete wassock with Lightroom?
 
Matt paper doesn't have the "punch" of non-matt so I'd expect to see washed out in Lightroom soft proofing.

The reason I'd typically choose a matt paper is to mute the colours and give an overall softer look to an image. If I wanted contrast, saturation and vibrancy I can't think of a reason I'd ever choose matt. Going to tag @Peter B because I did a couple of prints for him recently on a FPOTY win and couldn't decide between gloss and matt (so I did him both). The 2 paper types give 2 different "feels" to an image and that's really subjective to the photographer I think.

All paper takes blacks differently, and being able to take "deep" blacks is a desirable quality of any paper. It's usually referred to as the dmax and matt papers aren't generally renowned for it. It's usually a selling point. It's not mentioned at all on the Fuji Velvet datasheet.

If you're in the UK I'd be happy to run you off a couple of prints so you can see what I mean. It's the one thing that's very difficult to demonstrate online. Would just need a 2600x3500 file and your address. (would delete the file when done)
 
Matt paper doesn't have the "punch" of non-matt so I'd expect to see washed out in Lightroom soft proofing.

The reason I'd typically choose a matt paper is to mute the colours and give an overall softer look to an image. If I wanted contrast, saturation and vibrancy I can't think of a reason I'd ever choose matt. Going to tag @Peter B because I did a couple of prints for him recently on a FPOTY win and couldn't decide between gloss and matt (so I did him both). The 2 paper types give 2 different "feels" to an image and that's really subjective to the photographer I think.
I would have been delighted with either of the prints, and I had to sit them side by side to try and separate which one I was going to frame. I finally chose the gloss one as I felt it looked better behind glass, but I'd have been more than happy with the matt one if I didn't have the 2 to compare. Contrast and detail are not always things we associate with print films, whereas this was a scan of a contrasty slide and I felt the gloss was nearer the original.

To complicate matters further, I used to print on both gloss and pearl/matt when I had my darkroom, and I chose different finishes for different subjects. And if you want them even more complicated, I found that the digi files I sent to DS Colour came back quite a bit more contrasty than I had expected off the non-calibrated screen.
 
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But when soft-proofing in Lightroom the image just looks washed out and very flat.
Soft proofing is a simulation run. But the image has to look right when you soft proof it. You adjust it to do that. Once it passes that test, then how it looks when you revert (assuming that's what you do) to it's previous profile is immaterial.

If I've got it right about DSCL, you soft proof for a given paper, adjust till it looks right (it's worth making a photoshop action if you're going to repeat it, often of curves / levels), then switch off proofing and send as srgb? At which point it might look like anything, but the print process should replicate the effect you saw whilst soft proofing.
 
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I agree it doesn't look the ideal candidate for matt paper.

I just had a sunrise shot printed by DSCL on Permajet Photo Art Silk 290 (new experiment for me).

It's a little bit of a shot in the dark, because they adjust their "fine art paper" prints individually so soft proofing won't help you.

But I was very happy with it.
 
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