Printing from Lightroom 2.1 v. PS CS3 - Some Observations

[Schewe]

I posted that question with Tim Grey and DDQ, and he agreed that one step sharpening is as good as the two step process.)

Yeah...and Tim is wrong (I've told him that to his face so I'm happy to state that here on the forum). Now that Tim has left MSFT and is getting back into digital imaging and digital photography, perhaps he'll learn that or not–his choice but I wouldn't bet my life on Tim's advice without doing my own tests–which I have.

No less the Thomas Knoll who coauthored Photoshop and was the founder and primary engineer on Camera Raw seems to have agreed with the concept of a sharpening workflow because that's why he chose Bruce (and I filled in for Bruce) when he wanted to improve the capture sharpening of Camera Raw. The Lightroom engineers thought highly enough of a sharpening workflow that they paid for the right to put Bruce's work (and PhotoKit Sharpener's output sharpening) into Lightroom. So, pardon me if I dismiss Tom's opinion to a large extent...which, if you notice, is the whole purpose of this thread in the first place...so, at least "some people" disagree with a single sharpen workflow (at least, those who strive to get maximum image quality in prints).

You need to go to school...read his and get back to me: Thoughts on a sharpening workflow by Bruce Fraser

[alan a]

Thoughts on a sharpening workflow by Bruce Fraser[/url]

Thanks to Jeff and to all of you for your excellent responses.  (When I responded to BJanes I didn't see the response from Schewe, although maybe we were posting at about the same time.  I subsequently saw his response and greatly appreciate his input and recommendations.)

I certainly don't disagree that USM is "so last millennium."  I just couldn't get LR to work for me, so reverted back to the old stand-by of USM.  Thanks for the advice on how to do sharpening in the new millennium!

And, yes, Mr. Schewe, I will read your articles and buy your book and go to school!

Thanks again.

[CynthiaM]

The upside of this is when the final tiff image has been made in Photoshop and reimported into Lightroom, I can repurpose that single image to just about any print size and paper (by popping the layer image back into Photoshop to re-soft proof for different paper) without having to do multiple iterations from that file.

Is there a reason why you work in tiff as opposed to psd?  Does the choice of file format affect the output sharpening?

[jbm007]

Final decided to become a member. Been snooping around here for months.


Been using LR since 1.3 and Qimage Studio Pro. and finally PS CS4

On dark contrasting images Qimage provides better contrast and a little bit more image detail the LR does. This is not just my  subjective opinion. I provided Adobe several print images to evaluate and the general impression is that Qimage can and does provide about a 15-20% better contrast and detail on dark contrasting images then the current version 2.1

On most other images they are very close. Now that being said the genaral feeling is from Adobe "we want to be the best" how do we achieve that. I think it is just a matter of time before we see additional improvements to the print engine in LR

Jim M.