capture sharpen or output sharpen?

[sniper]

I am courious about the "best" method of sharpening with Lightroom, I downloaded the capture sharpening settings (mentioned elsewhere on the forum) and have given them a try.  My question though is, is it better to sharpen on import or after making any ajustments before exporting, or is it better to sharpen in Photoshop.
General opinion with PS is that sharpening should be the last step, I'm courious why with lightroom it seems recomended to sharpen as the first step?   Wayne

[Nat Coalson]

Wayne -

I use Lightroom heavily for processing but I'm most satisfied using PhotoKit Sharpener to do all my sharpening in Photoshop - at least on images for which I'm creating a Master file and that eventually will be printed.

So I turn off sharpening in Lightroom before going round-trip to Photoshop (and back to Lightroom as necessary).

I usually do a minimum of three (gentle) rounds of sharpening with PK Sharpener: Capture, Creative (both of these on the Master file at native resolution) and Print (after resizing to final print size).

The only time I apply sharpening in Lightroom is if I need to make quick web galleries or slideshows without going into Photoshop.

Hope this helps!

[Mark D Segal]

I am courious about the "best" method of sharpening with Lightroom, I downloaded the capture sharpening settings (mentioned elsewhere on the forum) and have given them a try.  My question though is, is it better to sharpen on import or after making any ajustments before exporting, or is it better to sharpen in Photoshop.
General opinion with PS is that sharpening should be the last step, I'm courious why with lightroom it seems recomended to sharpen as the first step?   Wayne
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There is no "general opinion" that sharpening should be the last step. There was such an opinion before Bruce Fraser developed the sharpening workflow. It could be worth your while reading the first three chapters of his book on sharpening, where you will get a full understanding of the reasons for adopting a staged process for sharpening within Photoshop.

Sharpening within Lightroom has improved alot between versions 1.0 and 1.2. It also has two stage sharpening now - at input and at the print stages. There are three considerations about whether to sharpen in LR or PS: quality of results, workflow efficiency and workflow flexibility. If you sharpen in Lightroom and render the image, that degree of sharpening will be embedded in the rendered pixels. If you wished to modify it, you would need to revert to Lightroom, change the settings and re-export the image to Photoshop. Likewise, within Photoshop, if you flatten a Capture Sharpen, you would need to revert to the raw file and start over if you had saved and closed the rendered image before deciding to change the sharpening.

As for quality of results, I am using PK Sharpener Pro in Photoshop, so I do no sharpening AT ALL in either Lightroom or Camera Raw. But I'm sure there are folks maximizing the use of Lightroom who have achieved fine results going from start to finish including sharpening within Lightroom. This is one of those areas where it would be hard to pass judgment on relative quality without doing a fair bit of comparative testing. And you need to make prints to test this properly. The display is not reliable enough. There is no question that using a tool such as PK Sharpener provides many more User-Interface adjustments and fine-tuning than available in Lightroom, but the advantage of that depends on what you need and on your own taste when evaluating results. Not an easy question - I think it's one of these areas where each user needs to satisfy himsel/herself by testing stuff.

[sniper]

Thanks for the advice guys, I have taken it up and downloaded the trial version of PK sharpener (I'll probably buy it) to test out.  Thanks again  Wayne