hi i'm robin whalley welcome to lenscraft today i want to look at sharpening photos for printing
i'll be explaining a couple of ways that i use to sharpen my own photos as part of preparing
to print them one method is using adobe lightroom and the other is using nick sharpener pro i also
want to let you know that i'm having a prize draw where i'm giving away a license for the latest
version of the nik collection the prize draw will be on the 16th of august 2021 and the details of
how to enter will be my august newsletter i'll include a link to subscribe to the newsletter in
the youtube video details below but let's start by looking at what i would do to sharpen this image
for printing using lightroom i've already made all my adjustments to the photo and
as far as i'm concerned it's finished and ready for printing by the way if you want to know about
my complete printing process i'll include a link to that in the youtube video information as well
having soft proofed and adjusted the image for the paper i'm using i'll set the lightroom print
sharpening options there are only two controls that i can use first i can set the level
of print sharpening to apply by selecting one of three options low standard or high
for images with a lot of fine detail i tend to use high if i were printing a
portrait i'd probably use low and for everything else i just use standard
the other setting i can choose is the media type which can be either matte or glossy this refers
to the type of paper you'll be printing on now the thing that tends to confuse a lot of people
is that you can't see the effect of the sharpening once you've chosen it it's very different from the
sharpening controls in the develop module where you see the effect on the image the reason for
this is the adobe engineers have worked out how much sharpening to apply to create a sharp print
you don't need to see this because if you did you probably think it was over sharpened and reduced
the strength they don't want you fiddling around with what they know is already the right settings
it's enough that you set the media type and level of sharpening and then trust the software to do
the rest now there may be times when you want more control than adjusting just these two settings
when this happens to me i switch my sharpening over to nick sharpener pro before printing
then after using nick sharpener pro on the image i print it from lightroom making sure i switch
off the lightroom print sharpening if i didn't do this i'd end up applying print sharpening in
nick and in lightroom which is too much so let's switch to photoshop now and i'll explain how i use
nick sharp the pro for print sharpening with my finished image open i'll launch sharpener
pro from the nik selective tool as you can see there are two versions of nick sharpener pro
if you want to know how to use both of these tools for general sharpening i'll include
links to those videos and articles in the youtube video information as well
to sharpen photos for printing we want to be using the output sharpener version when i click
to launch the plugin the selective tool creates a new layer because that's how i've configured it
this means my sharpening is applied to a separate layer which i can then save with the photoshop
file if you're familiar with sharpening you may be aware of the popular three-stage sharpening model
there's capture sharpening to compensate for the softening effect of raw capture there's creative
sharpening where you might sharpen certain areas to draw attention to them and finally
there's the output sharpening which is focused on preparing our photo for printing niche sharpener
pro output sharpener combines the creative and the output sharpening stages in one application
once the output sharpener opens you can see the creative sharpening controls in one section
then at the top we have the output sharpener controls which default to display
we need to start by changing the drop down at the top to inkjet print you'll also find other types
of printer here and each has a different set of controls switching to the inkjet printer method
shows three controls we can now adjust let's zoom the image to 100 magnification and i also want to
make sure i've got the preview set to sharpened image so i can show you some of the effects in the
different options looking at the image with these settings i'm sure you'll agree it looks terrible
but remember what i said about the sharpening in lightroom the sharpening is hidden from you
because adobe engineers don't want you fiddling with it trust the software to set the correct
level of sharpening for the settings you're using and the same goes for nick the first of
these i want to look at in nick sharpener pro is the paper here we have six quite different
services to choose from different surfaces respond differently to ink when you print a photo to them
so they need to be sharpened differently this is one of the great things about using sharpener pro
to sharpen photos for print it adjusts the level of sharpening to suit the media you select and
it has a good range of media watch what happens to the image when i switch between plain paper
and glossy paper sharpener pro applies much more sharpening when i select the plain paper option
that's because when we print plain paper the ink spreads or bleeds more than if we print a
glossy paper because of this it needs more sharpening to make the print appear sharp
the next option to set is the print resolution and this also affects the sharpness of the image lower
resolution printing tends not to look as sharp as high resolution and so requires more sharpening
watch what happens to the image when i change the resolution from 1200 by 600 to 2880 by 1440
notice how the image receives less sharpening at the higher resolution settings
the final option that affects the level of sharpening is the viewing distance
the closer you are to an image the less sharpening required to make the image appear sharp in niche
sharpener pro you can set the viewing distance in this dropdown let's look at the two extremes
of the settings starting with the 60 centimeter now compared this to the three meter plus setting
if the viewing distance will be 3 meters or more the image needs a lot more sharpening to highlight
the detail even on glossy paper now of course you may not know the viewing distance for the print
in fact that's quite likely in most cases which is when you should select the auto option nick
sharpener pro then calculates the likely viewing distance based on the image size with a larger
image print the viewing distance is likely to be further than for a small print because of this
the larger print requires more sharpening than a small print the beauty of nick sharpener pro
is that you select the relevant details for your print the software then takes care of applying
the correct level of sharpening you don't need to worry about getting it right and as you've seen in
this video the correct level of sharpening for a print may make the image look terrible on screen
learn to trust the software as it seems to make a great job of sharpening prints most
of the time after selecting the options for your print it's a good idea to save them as a preset
this avoids the need to keep changing the sharpening configuration which takes time
you can do this by clicking the add new preset option use a name that you will recognize in the
future and that includes some of your key settings i'll call this preset epson3880 lustre auto
then when i want to use those settings i only need to click preset after applying
the sharpening to the image i return to photoshop now all i need to do is save the
image and then print it from lightroom i hope you found today's video helpful if you have
please share it with others and don't forget to subscribe to my newsletter
i'm robin whalley you've been watching lenscraft i'll see you soon for another
video