Tell me, Jeff, am I crazy for preferring your general all-purpose capture sharpening action you outline in your workflow PDF (green channel/find edges, etc.) @ 68% opacity over the PKS capture sharpen for high res cameras?
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Pretty sure that PDF pre-dates PK Sharpener...and was a basis for Bruce and I to discuss sharpening workflow. And no, it doesn't surprise me that some people may prefer more aggressive vs less aggressive.
When Sharpener first came out, the Digital HighRez was the original 1Ds. We debated over adjusting or adding a new routine for the 1Ds MII-Bruce decided against it. I actually will often run SuperSharpener 1 before capture sharpening to add a touch of additional sharpening-then turn that layer off after. Now that a 1Ds MIII is looming, we'll need to revisit the capture sharpening routines, although Bruce won't be here for that-I've learned enough that I can muddle through.
Comparing the results on screen is a bit foolish-even at 50% it won't represent the final print. Closer to 25% is more accurate in terms of the screen dither. But even that is off due to the differences in sizes-particularly large prints. The only way of testing a sharpening workflow is to actually do the prints...
I thought the whole idea of a native resolution on a printer was debunked. Is this not so?
Depends on what your are asking...the "effective resolution" of Epson's 1440/720 printers is 360ppi. The effective resolution for Canon & HP is 300ppi. But unless you are doing substantial upsampling AND image processing on top, you really don't get much help with an image unless you are going 200-400% upsampled. You are a lot better off using the image's "native resolution" (which is also a bit of a misnomer) and sharpening for the actual resolution sent to the printer.
And just to be clear, the print drivers don't do interpolation so much as use an error diffusion algorithm to form dots...if you send it TOO much resolution, it just tends to drop it like a sieve...but too much can actually be a bad thing in some cases where you can encounter interference patterns.
It's been my experience that as long as your file has uninterpolated resolution between 180 and 480 ppi, you DON'T want to resample to print-just resize with no resampling and sharpen for the actual pixel density. If it falls between the PK Sharpening settings, use the one closest.
Bruce Fraser figured out the resolution required based on how much resolution the normal human eye can resolve at various viewing distances. Since human vision is based on 1 minute of 1 degree, depending on how close or far your viewing distance is the eye can resolve:
8" - 480
10" - 360
12" - 300
18" - 240
24" - 180
So, as long as your viewing distances fall in the 8"-24" range, 180-480 is all you need to worry about. Note, more resolution in the print isn't bad and Bruce liked to point out the intended viewing distance of photographers is limited only by the length of their nose...