Hopefully, many of our images are not too "out of gamut" for most of the printers we use.
Usually, wider gamuts mean more saturated, vibrant colors than the narrower ones. When we soft proof and view an image in a narrower gamut, we are usually seeing how the image will look with less saturated colors. The rendering intent you choose may also effect the
in-gamut colors too! -This may be a good thing, or not. It depends on the image, and the viewers taste.
On the one hand, it's perfectly okay to try each of the rendering intents to see which one gives you the most pleasing version of your image.
On the other, I like to know a little bit about what is going on, because I know that the range of colors of my image can and will be shifted around depending on which
rendering intent I choose.
From here on, it is given that there are some colors in our image are within the gamut of the chosen printer, and some colors are out of gamut, and cannot be reproduced without colorimetric rendering . . . Photoshop gives a few choices
Perceptual Intent: This rendering intent is best suited for photography. This is because it will maintain the
relationship between the colors in the image so it (hopefully) continues to make sense visually. This is achieved by compressing the
entire range of colors in the image to entirely fit within the printers gamut. This means the original colors that were reproducible get shifted too. Out of gamut colors will get compressed to gamut, sometimes will within gamut.
As per Photoshop Help, "This is the standard rendering intent in Japan."
Saturation Intent: Similar to Perceptual Intent in that the in-gamut colors will get compressed. The difference here is that the intention is to maintain a saturated look. This is achieved by compressing the out of gamut colors to their nearest in-gamut neighbors that
live on the outer edges of the in-gamut map. The colors that were already in-gamut had to be compressed in order to maintain their distance from the out of gamut ones in order to maintain the saturated look.
The next two rendering intents are interesting because they deal significantly with the fact that different gamuts, or color spaces have white points in slightly different locations relative to the entire "reference space" that we use to represent all viewable colors. (Please play with your cameras White Balance to experience the significance of where the White Point lives.)
Relative Intent: This one gets its name because it shifts the white point of the starting color space to the white point of the destination color space, shifting all colors with it. Furthermore, it will clip the out of gamut colors and only maintain the in-gamut ones. This is okay for photography, particularly when there are few saturated, out of gamut colors.
From Photoshop Help, "Relative Colorimetric preserves more of the original colors in an image than Perceptual. This is the standard rendering intent for printing in North America and Europe."
Absolute Intent: This one is the most exotic, in my opinion, and the most useless to photographers. It may be the MOST USEFUL for graphic artists, and printers. This Rendering intent behaves a lot like Relative Intent but
does not adapt the white point to the new color space. This Rendering Intent is used to simulate how the color of the paper-media effects the
white balance of the destination gamut. If the color profile being used was made by metering colors off of newsprint or ivory card stock, then soft proofing with this rendering intent will produce the proper color caste of the source paper. In other words, if the white point was defined as the white of clean newsprint, or as the ivory of the greeting card stock, then soft proofing with this intent will shift the white point
as you see it on your monitor to simulate the look of these papers.