different sharpening techniques for web and printing

[Tonyz]

Just to confuse things...and gettiing away from the 100-400 even more....There are big differences in the way you should sharpen for the screen and the way you sharpen for print...

[Comet]

enlighten me on the different techniques for different display...

[skippyscage]

indeed - I didn't know that you should apply different techniques depending on the end result...

[Tonyz]

Oh Lordy.....I have to dig ut some articles and provide some links....

I print on a Canon i9900, almost always doing my own prints for presentation, my own display etc.   That in mind, you can sharpen a print much more aggressively than you can a shot that is just for screen use.  (To the point where halos/artifacts etc are very visible on the screen, but it just makes the print POP.)

As an example for a 13x19....I will do my crop, color adjustment etc and then sharpen.  For print I will take it into Lab Color, then cliick the Lightness layer and then apply USM at the rate of about 150, 2.0, and .5.  (Each print varies....play with it till you get it where you like it.)  Bring it back to RGB mode and print.

I will look for more info on this.  One of the UK photo magazines had a great article on this about a year ago.  Not sure if I still have it here in my mess.

[skippyscage]

interesting - that would explain why a VERY grainy shot of mine (high ISO and low light) that was requested to be blown up to 36x24 (or close to that) looked horrible on my monitor.

I cleaned it up the best I could, made some excuses to the customer that I may not be able to produce the result they needed, then got it printed anyway --- and it came out fantastic. 

I was happy(ish) and the customer was over the moon. 

[Engine15]

Is anybody using Adobe Lightroom? I've only been in the digital realm for 6 months and haven't invested in Photoshop yet. I worked with Lightroom in the beta form and have used Elements as well. Do any of these come close to PS abilities?

[Tonyz]

Elements is just a watered down PS but it does just about all you need to do.  There are some functions, curves comes to mind, that Elements does not have that would be really useful, but for the price difference...

[GeoffS]

indeed - I didn't know that you should apply different techniques depending on the end result...

One great sharpening reference is Bruce Fraser's "Real World Sharpening" book.  Highly recommended.
There's an excerpt with a section on "output sharpening": http://www.adobepress.com/articles/article.asp?p=608637&seqNum=4&rl=1

Cheers,

Geoff S.

[BillF]

There are seemingly several sharpening threads, so I'll just pick one for this question. Because I am talking about sharpening, I didn't put this under a "shooting" thread even though that is what I am talking about. With that intro, what are thoughts on the "PICTURE STYLE" that the 5D and 1DMIIN offer?

After reading some of these sharpening threads and linked articles, I wonder if I am asking too much of the camera to sharpen and should leave that for full-blown software programs and processes instead? On my camera models cited, if you shoot "Landscape," the camera applies sharpening on its own. You can even increase the amount of sharpening over and above that rather broad setting of LANDSCAPE.

Maybe I should shoot STANDARD, stop asking the camera to do what possibly it can't do well, and do the sharpening later (how much later and how often later seems to be the subject of the other threads...all good reads)?

What say ye?

[GeoffS]

...  I wonder if I am asking too much of the camera to sharpen ...
What say ye?

IMHO you aren't so much asking too much of the camera, but you are locking yourself into a particular final result too early in the process.

Personally, I believe the correct answer is to let the camera do what it's best at (collecting the image on the sensor), and let post-processing do what it's best at (taking the sensor data and making the photo you want from it).  To that end, I bypass all the picture styles, etc. and just save the raw file.

Cheers,

Geoff S.

[bcradio]

Yep, it is not really practical to un-sharpen a photo that is too sharpened. Best to do it in post-production.