Note: Kirk is "the Affordable Full time Professional Wedding Photographer Winsdor, Ontario". Here is the Link to KW Masters Photography and home of the blog.
Introduction:
The question of when to sharpen you digital images is an important one. We will examine when and how often you should sharpen your digital images before you print them.
The Digital Capture Process:
In my previous post I discussed the excellent sharpness of the Canon 70-200 mm F4 lens. Guess what, during the digital processing of your image, the image is actually Blurred and then re-sharpened. Olympus has gotten away from this in their latest E-5 camera and it looks like Nikon is also following suit. I have not yet heard that Canon has adopted this image processing path. You can imagine my horror after paying thousands of dollars for sharp lenses to find this out! Actually, I have known about this for years and years. The simply fact is that you must or should sharpen your images twice.
About 5-6 years ago there was an expert in this field who was working with Adobe camera raw on this very subject. He has since passed. That is why you will find the clarity and sharpening tools in Adobe Camera Raw. It is because of his efforts and expertise. Adobe Camera Raw also has an excellent masking tool that you can use when you first sharpen your images. It is also his recommendation that you sharpen your images a second time just before printing. DXO also has presharpening tools that you can use along with lens distortion and sharpening.
But how much sharpening you should apply is a difficult one. Normally if you see small sharpening halos on your monitor, they normally do not show up in the final print. That is what you should use as your guide when you sharpen your images prior to printing.
How do you sharpen your images prior to printing?
I see two ways to do it. You could use the sharpening tools in Photoshop. I am referring to the menu, sharpen, more sharpen, smart sharping. You can also sharpen desirable areas of your images, like the eyes, rings, etc with the sharpening tool found in the Tools section.
I use a combination of the above PLUS NIK Output Sharpening Pro plugin. Again, you can easily over sharpen and that is something that you don't want to do. With the NIK plugin, I over sharpen and pull it back with the opacity slider to where I can see the small halos. That normally works well. If you you save your file in Tiff or PSD layers, you can go back and adjust the file if necessary. The NIK plugin allows you to sharpen for different output papers. Like Silver Halide process or Ink Jet printing.
Masters-Tip: Presharpen your images before working on them
Masters-Tip: Sharpen your images a second time just before printing. I recommend the NIK Sharpener Pro here but the choice is yours.
Kirk is a Professional Wedding Photographer in Windsor Ontario Canada. In appreciation if you would be so kind as to give a G+ and a Facebook Like KW Masters Photography on his Facebook page.
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