Sharpening and printing ??

[Talita]

I know this is a stupid question, when asked before I tested it for myself but I`m nosey and can`t wait.

I was reading through the forum the other day and read that you shouldn`t sharpen pics you want to print, why is that ?

[RichardTaylor]

I always shoot RAW so I always sharpen my pics, either for screen or for printing. .
See this:
How To Sharpen An Image - Advanced Photo Sharpening | PhotoshopSupport.com

However there is a reference to not sharpening some jpg files on the same link.


You may also want to see this.
http://www.graphics.com/modules.php?...icle&artid=719

[Talita]

Thanks Richard, will go through them. I can see why sharpening jpgs would not be cool, they come out weird on the screen already, I also shoot in raw and they were looking rather prettty onscreen. Going to print a few over the weekend to test.

Appreciated. :-)

[Talita]

lmao :-)

From the first link there, the first paragraph "I sharpen every digital camera photo, either to help bring back some of the original crispness that gets lost during the correction process, or to help fix a photo that’s slightly out of focus. Either way, I haven’t met a digital camera (or scanned) photo that I didn’t think needed a little sharpening."

So glad I`m not the only one feeling this way, I thought I was going into a PP frenzy with all this software I`m testing.....

[Talita]

Another thought while going through that reading material. Do you sharpen before or after edit ?

[OsmosisStudios]

Sharpening is either your first step, or last step. In my workflow it's a seperate layer, so it doesnt really matter: I can move it around.

Keep in mind, you'll likely have to sharpen more for print than for web.

[vsa]

Originally Posted by OsmosisStudios

Keep in mind, you'll likely have to sharpen more for print than for web.

Yep. In print the image can tolerate much more sharpening before it starts to really show in a bad way. Same goes for noise. You'd be amazed how much noise can be in an image before you really notice it on a print (partly depending on the printer and paper quality of course).

And I sharpen the raw image when editing in Lightroom and if I do some tweaks in Photoshop after that I'll sharpen at the end of it (if I resize the image it needs a little bit sharpening since the resize affects the sharpness).

[RichardTaylor]

For me it is always the second last step, before printing our out puting for web.

[Talita]

Thanks, this answered my question. I will do some test shots, mark them and print to see the difference.

Appreciated.

[LeeR]

It has always been my understanding that sharpening is the last thing you should do just prior to printing. You should first enlarge/reduce/crop to create the size image you are going to be printing, apply your sharpening, by whatever method, and view the finished product first at 100%, then 50%. Why 50%? Because that most closely represents what the finished sharpening will look like from the printer. As vsa has pointed out, printed images can generally tolerate a great deal more sharpening that on-screen or web images.