Sharpening for Print

T

taxboy

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Edit My Images
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Looking for some advice please; my initial Google search highlights a 3 stage approach to sharpening:

1) Capture Sharpening - Apply a small amount of sharpening to the RAW file to begin the editing process
2) Creative Sharpening - Apply localised sharpening e.g. using masks etc to improve the image selectively
3)Output Sharpening - Sharpen for print (in this instance)

Is this advice still valid ? Or has software moved on to the extent that step 3 is no longer needed and this phase is automatically taken care of when printing. If it still required can anyone offer advice on how they carry out the sharpen for print phase please. If it's of any help I'm looking for assistance on printing landscape images on a Canon PRO 300

TIA
 
I normally sharpen at stage 3 using one of the default lightroom settings when I resize to print. It's my expectation that the printer has no way of knowing what will be rquired.
 
If you want to understand the emtire printing process give this book a try
Printing
Very imformative as is the companion volume on Sharpening.
 
I aim to do almost all my sharpening in step 2 of your list. However, when printing and I always print from Lightroom, I tick the box Sharpen for printing and select Glossy or other as appropriate. I find that this does not may a huge difference and assume it is to compensate for the slight deterioration due to converting to a CMYK image and probably re-sizing as well.

Dave
 
Awfers said:
Are you printing via an online service, local print shop or your own printer?

If the online / local service, maybe ask them how to best prepare your files...

I used to work for an online service that offered a Pro printing service where we made zero modifications to the image files before exposing onto AGFA professional archive paper so the photographer got (most of the time) exactly what they set the file to be. Granted, this was quite a while ago, but the process may not be dissimilar today.
Click to expand...
I'm printing at home on my recently acquired Canon Pro 300
 
Personally I don't use any Capture sharpening. Sharpening is quite aggressive and I prefer to leave it to the end. Some people use Capture sharpening so that the image looks OK whilst editing but turn it off before they do Output sharpening. Others leave it on. Your choice really.
As far as Output sharpening is concerned a sharp screen view can look a bit soft when printed so a bit more Output sharpening is required. It is a bit subjective though, I do not like some images, which are oversharpened in my opinion, but others do like them.

I saw some recommended Unsharp Mask settings a while ago which are a good start, others may disagree:

The figures are for Intensity / Radius / Threshold

Landscape 45% / 5% / 1-2
Face Portraits 20%-35% / 5% / 3-5
Family Portraits 30%-50% / 5% / 2-5
Wildlife/Birds 40% / 5% / 2-3
Flower Closeup 30%-40% / 5% / 1-4
 
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