Sharpening an Image for print

Just curious as to how you sharpen your images prior to printing them...

or do you leave them as is???

any info would be great!!!

Thanks
Darren

Of course the camera and resolution play a huge part in the method and amount of sharpening that's required. It also depends on the subject matter and how aggressive the in camera AA filter is. So, it's a hard question to answer.

Of all the things digital one thing that causes the most misery is learning when to say when with sharpening. Trial and error, error, error and more error before arriving at a happy compromise is the misery/happiness of sharpening. Once each of us finds that happy place with our own sharpening madness it's cool but for most of us getting there uh uh uh sucked. And every once in awhile each of us can take a hard left with a new fangled sharpening tool and the whole rigarmarole starts all over again.

I have Focal Blade, Fred Miranda Sharpening Tools, PK Sharpener and of course the built in sharpeners in Photoshop CS2 which aint too bad in their own right. Oh and let's not forget the sharpening tools in Lightroom now - such as they are...These still have room for improvement.

All of the above have a real chance of use depending on on on on the image, the weather, my mood I guess. After much use of all of the above sharpening wrenches I like them all for different reasons. But for the most part I am still using PK Sharpener the most. It has enough ways to mix it up and meet my needs for 90% of my images. If I have an image that has a lot of clear sky Fred Miranda's Sharpening Tool does an awesome job of NOT sharpening clear blue sky. Better than anything else I've tried.

So that's my sharpening madness. What I think will happen here on the forum (or anytime you get a group of photographers together and start talking sharpening) is there will be a LOT of variance of preferences when it comes to sharpening. Take it all in and try the ones that sound the most appealing to you and continue to ask more questions about the madness that is shaprening in this new fangled digital world of ours.

The bottom line for me is my trusty Canon 1D Mark II doesn't crank out images sharp enough for printing right out of the camera. So sharpen I must - dangit...

Darren,

I've been reading some recent web articles about sharpening, uprezzing, and so forth. Do you have PSCS2? What sizes are we talking here? What subject (I guess landscapes/waterfall pics)? Full sized or cropped in any way? We already know you have the D70.

These all affect the amount of sharpening to produce a pleasing print. But there's a lot of wiggle room on that. You will get many answers.

Kevin

I guess better minds than mine have wrestled with this and arrived at no conclusion. Come to Eric H's session tomorrow night, I'd love to hear more thoughts/results/ideas &c.

I guess better minds than mine have wrestled with this and arrived at no conclusion. Come to Eric H's session tomorrow night, I'd love to hear more thoughts/results/ideas &c.

We can definitely talk about this subject and work it on a photo or two.

Thanks..I am planning on being there....

Is this session for everyone? The idea sounds like it could be very helpful - and a lot of fun! Also, do you guys sharpen your photos while converting from RAW? What is the difference between that and unsharp masking afterwards? Ive notice what seems to affect sharpness as well is the type of RAW converter used. I convert my RAW files to a DNG file first because photoshop CS (not CS2) won't read the RAW cr2 files - I betcha I lose a lotta sharpness doing that.