Original edited image as viewed in AdobeRGB workspace of Photoshop CS2.

Actual colors as viewed on-screen are a bit brighter with better contrast.  Image as seen here is closer to the actual print, which remains a bit darker and less contrasty still.  During efforts to resolve why the prints were coming out darker desired, I began to explore soft proofing for the first time, and now am even more confused.  I thought the intent was for the soft proof to reasonably mimic how the printed output would appear for the chosen media profile, but my prints are nowhere close to undergoing the radical color shift as suggested by the soft proof.  Thank goodness!  But, why is the soft proof so inaccurate?  Wondering if I had a bad LCD monitor profile, I recalibrated/reprofiled it, as well as my CRT.  Regardless of which monitor I designate as primary and using the related profile, the soft proof remains horribly wrong.  The next thing I questioned, with reluctance, was the Epson media profiles.  So, using Monaco EasyColor and my Epson 2450 scanner, I created a new media profile for the Enhanced Matte paper that I was printing on.  Once again, the soft proof is inaccurate and not too much different from the original Epson profile.

Soft Proof of Image under Epson R1800 Enhanced Matte Profile

Soft Proof of Image under Monaco R1800 Enhanced Matte Profile
 

Given my lack of success with the above print, I began to question if its color gamut was somehow causing problems in Photoshop's interpretation of how to render the colors in the soft proof.  So, I compared it to the print below, which printed out extremely well on Epson Premium Luster.  Once again however, the soft proof reveals an inaccurate representation of the final print, with a significant loss of color in the reds and yellows.  So, again, the question remains one of why is the soft proofing not working for me as intended?

Color settings in PSCS2 are for the AdobeRGB workspace, Relative Colorimetric intent, and Black Point Compensation enabled.  Changing to Perceptual intent or disabling Black Point Compensation made no significant difference to explain the grossly different soft proofing results.

After numerous attempts at getting softproofing to work for me, I finally noticed I'd overlooked something that was pretty much staring me in the face the whole time...the "Preserve RGB Colors" option was enabled.  Disabling it, my results with the softproof much more closely matched up with prints on Epson Premium Luster, but the matte papers continue to challenge me some, yet that also seems to vary with the image printed which in turn leaves me wondering if the issue is one of the image gamut vs. that of the paper itself.   This is all a learning process!

Original Image in AdobeRGB Workspace

Soft Proof of Image under Epson R1800 Enhanced Matte Profile