Soft Proofing + Sharpening

[telecomm]

OK, so sharpening should be applied as a final editing step, and how much sharpening an image will need depends on a number of factors, including the final print size.

So, how do you determine how much sharpening to apply? Say I've got a 10 megapixel image to be printed on A4/letter size paper. What are some reliable ways to soft-proof for sharpness before printing the image?

 

[Designer Dale]

All I can think of is to save it as a print quality PDF and view it with Acrobat. But you're still just looking at it on the screen. Maybe take a vertical crop through a key area and print it on your output media? You could reuse the sheet by moving the crop area. Kind of like test strips on photo paper to set exposure times.

Dale

 

[telecomm]

Thanks Designer Dale. I'll probably give this a try, but I'm surprised that people don't seem to have a sort of "standard procedure" for this sort of proofing. Colour gets all the attention!

 

[PeteB]

Optimum sharpening can also depend on the grade of paper and the DPI of the printer (according to my Bruce Fraser book on sharpening).

Another tack might be to sharpen to your taste (on screen) and allow the print shop to determine what kind of output sharpening you want based on the printer and media used.

 

[telecomm]

Optimum sharpening can also depend on the grade of paper and the DPI of the printer (according to my Bruce Fraser book on sharpening).

Wow, a book on sharpening!

I guess this is complicated stuff!

 

[PeteB]

Wow, a book on sharpening!

I guess this is complicated stuff!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/World-Sharp...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1249582366&sr=1-1

 

[owaint]

Nik software's Sharpener Pro seems pretty good to me, it has presets for different outputs (display, lab printer, inkjet, etc) and has a soft proof option which shows you a good approximation of how it will end up.

http://www.niksoftware.com/sharpenerpro/en/entry.php?

 

[telecomm]

Nik software's Sharpener Pro seems pretty good to me, it has presets for different outputs (display, lab printer, inkjet, etc) and has a soft proof option which shows you a good approximation of how it will end up.

http://www.niksoftware.com/sharpenerpro/en/entry.php?

Thanks for the link. A bit pricey for me, though, since photography is really just a hobby for me.

I think I may have a look at some of the books, but for the moment I'll probably stick with the sophisticated "print-a-few-samples" approach.