Posterity purposes

[chauncey]

My three adult kids were astounded that I have over 4.5 TB of psd files and that I've never converted
any of them for print, should they ever want to.

Am I correct in assuming that there is no way to convert them to sRGB for printing, en mass?
Is there any type of generic soft-proofing that would satisfy professional printers?

[Manfred M]

My three adult kids were astounded that I have over 4.5 TB of psd files and that I've never converted
any of them for print, should they ever want to.

Am I correct in assuming that there is no way to convert them to sRGB for printing, en mass?
Is there any type of generic soft-proofing that would satisfy professional printers?

Photoshop's Image Processor will do what you are asking; it's under the files menu; pick "Scripts" and the first menu item is the "Image Processor". You set your directory and image type (sRGB jpeg, for example) and you can even resize them. As with any level of automation, you get exactly that, each and every file is handled the same way.

When it comes to "generic soft proofing", that goes against the flow of what soft proofing is all about - seeing if an individual image has any OOG issues. It you are converting to sRGB, soft proofing is almost irrelevant as the sRGB colour space is so small that any commercial photo printer will have a much wider gamut than the image you are planning to print.

[chauncey]

Are you suggesting that converting to sRGB is unnecessary when submitting an image to a professional printing lab?

[proseak]

Talk to your printer, ask what they prefer... and make sure they understand the issues involved; some years ago, one refused Jpeg saying it was compressed and thus A Bad Thing. He wanted me to email him a Tiff, and didn't know the difference between RGB, CMYK and LAB. I went elsewhere.

For off the shelf and most retail places, they expect sRGB but a pro lab might prefer Adobe RGB etc

The Tiff in question would have been c.100Mb

[Manfred M]

Are you suggesting that converting to sRGB is unnecessary when submitting an image to a professional printing lab?

Most labs assume sRGB. Some of the better ones handle AdobeRGB. You have to ask and if they don't give you a clear answer, then it is safe to assume that they will print anything as sRGB.

If they handle AdobeRGB, then ask what file format they want, although most tend to work jpegs only (which can be sRGB or AdobeRGB). Ask the lab for a printer / paper profile for soft proofing (the better ones definitely do that - even Costco has theirs available on line). If they don't do that, find another lab.

[chauncey]

I should have made myself more clear...I want to convert them to a format to is likely to be acceptable
to the pro printers ten years down the road.

[Manfred M]

16-bit TIFF would do that, but that won't do anything to reduce your storage space.