LR Output sharpening - standard amount too strong for my taste ?!?

[picturesfromthelow]

Hi,
I found (in the video tutorials and books I read) that there is a general consensus towards setting Output Sharpening in Lightroom at the "Standard" amount. My personal experience however is that "Standard" is too strong. The print looks to me a little bit over sharpened, and I found that setting "Low" amount yields a better result, more natural looking. I am currently printing images shot with a Canon 5d MarkII on Moab Entrada Rag Natural (upsampled to 360ppi in LR). Am I doing something wrong, or do you also set "low" amount?

[Nigel Johnson]

Lucas

Different people like different levels of sharpening partially dependent on how closely they look at the print (close viewing will require less sharpening). Because of this Adobe offers the three levels of sharpening. You are probably not doing anything wrong, just expressing a personal preference. However it would be worth checking you capture sharpening (ie Lightroom's detail panel sharpening) to ensure that you are not over-sharpening at capture and creating obvious sharpening artefacts such as obvious haloes.

Regards
Nigel

[NikoJorj]

I am currently printing images shot with a Canon 5d MarkII on Moab Entrada Rag Natural (upsampled to 360ppi in LR).

A more important info could be your printer model...
With my (dying) R1800 and my tastes, I also find the "low" setting often better.

[Josh-H]

Hi,
I found (in the video tutorials and books I read) that there is a general consensus towards setting Output Sharpening in Lightroom at the "Standard" amount. My personal experience however is that "Standard" is too strong. The print looks to me a little bit over sharpened, and I found that setting "Low" amount yields a better result, more natural looking. I am currently printing images shot with a Canon 5d MarkII on Moab Entrada Rag Natural (upsampled to 360ppi in LR). Am I doing something wrong, or do you also set "low" amount?

Lucas, you are likely doing nothing wrong at all. Output sharpening in Lightroom is offered in three flavours in the print module because the 'capture' sharpening process in the develop module is somewhat subjective and open to individual preference. If you are finding a setting of 'standard' in the print module to strong when printing it is likely that you are just a little more heavy handed with the capture sharpening in the develop module than the developers were.

You can either back off your capture sharpening in the develop module; which will likely mean you will find a setting of standard just fine in the print module or continue with your current workflow and just apply a setting of low in the print module. The net result will be more or less the same in print.

As an aside - the size you are printing makes a difference as does the printer. I assume you are printing to an Epson at sizes greater than 13 x 19 given you are up sampling to 360 ppi

How does an exported jpeg look with a setting of standard sharpening applied in the export dialogue? Overly Crunchy? If so, thats a pretty good indicator that perhaps you are a wee bit heavy handed with your capture sharpening in the develop module.

I print to Moab Entrada Rag (and Somerset Rag almost exclusively). I am more than intimately familiar with both papers and have probably gone through thousands of sheets of both papers. In my own experience I find a setting of high works best for sharpening in the print module - but I also know I despise capture sharpening that is overdone - so I tend to apply it cautiously and prefer to under sharpen during capture and then make it up in print. Its not right or wrong.. its just your preferred work flow - season to taste as they say.

[indusphoto]

You have not mentioned the size of print you are making. 360dpi is on the high side, and for a large print, LR will have to uprez the file quite a bit. Applying additional sharpening to uprezzed files, unless done carefully (i.e. manually), will easily result in artifacts.

My guess is that if you print at 240ppi with high amount of print sharpening, you will get the same look as 360ppi with low sharpening.

[picturesfromthelow]

Thanks for your replies guys!

A more important info could be your printer model...

I print on an Epson 3880.

How does an exported jpeg look with a setting of standard sharpening applied in the export dialogue? Overly Crunchy? If so, thats a pretty good indicator that perhaps you are a wee bit heavy handed with your capture sharpening in the develop module.

I use standard amount when exporting .jpegs and they look fine to me. I only see this over sharpened look when looking at prints.

You have not mentioned the size of print you are making. 360dpi is on the high side, and for a large print, LR will have to uprez the file quite a bit. Applying additional sharpening to uprezzed files, unless done carefully (i.e. manually), will easily result in artifacts.

My guess is that if you print at 240ppi with high amount of print sharpening, you will get the same look as 360ppi with low sharpening.

I always try to print at either 360ppi or 720ppi basing on the assumption that those are the figures the print driver expects to receive. I recently compared two prints of the same image: one was printed at the native resolution (240ppi) + output sharpening and the other was up-sampled in LR at 360ppi + output sharpening. I personally found that the up-sampled print had better detail.

Luca

[Josh-H]

I use standard amount when exporting .jpegs and they look fine to me. I only see this over sharpened look when looking at prints.

I find this result very curious indeed.

You are printing on matt paper; which can hold a lot more sharpening than gloss papers before looking 'crunchy'. As I said, I am pretty intimately familiar with Moab Entrada Rag. (I have boxes and boxes of it and hundreds of prints here in my studio on this paper). It holds sharpening incredibly well because of its very subtle surface texture. Its certainly not a paper that is easily over sharpened. In fact, I don't think I ever made a print on this paper I consider over sharpened.

i don't print with Epson printers (I use Canon), so perhaps someone who does can chime in with thoughts on anything the printer might add to the equation. I would add I do uprez to both 300 and 600 DPI depending on the size I am printing too for my Canon large format printers.

What lens are you using on your 5D MKII and what capture sharpening settings are you applying? Detail, Radius and Amount? Give me an example of a shot with a given lens, what F stop you used and the sharpening settings you applied in the develop module.

[picturesfromthelow]

Josh,
this image (export with output sharpening at standard amount) was show at f8, 1/125 exposure, ISO 200 with an EOS 5D mark II and a 24-70L lens set at 35mm.
Following Detail panel settings were applied: Amount 51, Radius 0.9, Detail 45, Masking 20.
I did some prints of this image and I find that standard amount of output sharpening produced the over-sharpened look I was talking about earlier. When using low, the image almost perfectly matches the level of detail I can see on the monitor with soft proofing activated. So, I think standard amount is adding something to the final print, while low just perfectly recovers the detail lost in the printing process without going over its purpose.

Saluti,
Luca

[framah]

If you like it at the "low" setting, then it is the best for you.
There is no right or wrong here.. it's what you want to see.

As Louie Armstrong once said about music

"If it sounds good, it IS good."

[madmanchan]

Yes, the different output sharpening "volume" settings (low, standard, high) are all there to be used.  So if "low" looks better to you, by all means use it.  Note that there is an interaction with regular capture sharpening.  That is, if the image is a little crunchy at 100% pixel view in Develop, then Standard will generally make it a little oversharpened in the print.  Exported screen-sized JPEGs (with screen sharpening) are a little more forgiving of aggressive capture sharpening, so this is one reason you may find it problematic in a print but not on the (resized) screen image.

[Wayne Fox]

I recently compared two prints of the same image: one was printed at the native resolution (240ppi) + output sharpening and the other was up-sampled in LR at 360ppi + output sharpening. I personally found that the up-sampled print had better detail.

240 isn't the "native" resolution, it's just the default of lightroom. I think the consensus lately is for an epson printer setting at 360 ppi will yield best results (which you discovered with your testing) unless the file itself is large enough that it would need to down sample.  In that case, I think most are finding setting to 720 ppi and then enabling the Finest Detail option in the driver can yield best results (although 360 will certainly look great as well)

I agree with Nigel's comment ... if you feel standard is too much sharpening I believe you are over applying capture sharpening.  One problem with too much capture sharpening is you normally get very poor results when down sampling dramatically, such as for web images.

It's easy to go too far with capture sharpening, since the implication is visually you are making it sharp.  Capture sharpening is best used to restore softness from things like the AA filter etc. but typically is quite subtle - no obvious halos.

Output sharpening is based on achieving specific width halos at contrast edges based on detail size, print size etc. Most of the time output sharpened images on screen look pretty crunchy and using the screen to determine the right amount is basically guessing.  I believe the idea of the 3 levels of sharpening are to allow variations of sharpening based on the image content itself (lots of important micro detail, micro detail not so important, no micro detail) which is something you would try to do on your own if doing output sharpening in Photoshop. Output sharpening has to based on the final image going to the output device, where as the other two or based on the file itself.  Different size prints require differing amounts of output sharpening, thus lightroom takes the work out of all that by allowing  you to have one master file that is sharpened at output time based on the current settings rather than creating a resized file for every size print and then sharpening it appropriately.

I feel "competent" at doing this, but certainly haven't mastered it yet.   I am working through Bruce Fraser/Jeff Schewe's book for the second time (real world Image Sharpening) and I think the Lightroom 3 videos as Camera to Print (and assuming the new Camera to Print and screen when that segment is released) have some good info on sharpening (as well as all aspects of workflow).

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

240 isn't the "native" resolution, it's just the default of lightroom. I think the consensus lately is for an epson printer setting at 360 ppi will yield best results (which you discovered with your testing) unless the file itself is large enough that it would need to down sample.  In that case, I think most are finding setting to 720 ppi and then enabling the Finest Detail option in the driver can yield best results (although 360 will certainly look great as well)

Hi Wayne,

Yes, that's the most common approach. It will produce good results for most images, although one can eek out a fraction more spunk by always going to 720 PPI on Epsons (600 PPI on Canons), but the Epson does require the 'finest detail' option to achieve it.

I agree with Nigel's comment ... if you feel standard is too much sharpening I believe you are over applying capture sharpening.

The main issue is USM-like output sharpening at too low a PPI, and IMHO 360 PPI is only just enough for moderate sharpening. With 720 PPI one can go a bit further before it becomes too much. I wouldn't be surprised if the OP would find 720 PPI with a normal amount, just right for his workflow, while at 360 PPI and a normal amount he feels it's a bit too much.

Cheers,
Bart

[picturesfromthelow]

Guys,
thank you for the additional comments.

240 isn't the "native" resolution, it's just the default of lightroom. I think the consensus lately is for an epson printer setting at 360 ppi will yield best results (which you discovered with your testing) unless the file itself is large enough that it would need to down sample.  In that case, I think most are finding setting to 720 ppi and then enabling the Finest Detail option in the driver can yield best results (although 360 will certainly look great as well)

Wayne, I agree, by the way when I wrote 240ppi I was referring to the resolution of the image, with LR resize box unchecked.

Yes, the different output sharpening "volume" settings (low, standard, high) are all there to be used.  So if "low" looks better to you, by all means use it.  Note that there is an interaction with regular capture sharpening.  That is, if the image is a little crunchy at 100% pixel view in Develop, then Standard will generally make it a little oversharpened in the print.  Exported screen-sized JPEGs (with screen sharpening) are a little more forgiving of aggressive capture sharpening, so this is one reason you may find it problematic in a print but not on the (resized) screen image.

Thank you Eric for your reply, this totally makes sense according to my experience (if not, I would have been wrong then  )