For postprocessing, my workflow consists of raw conversion in CS2 with no sharpening. I sharpen in 3 or 4 steps only after spotting, curve manipulation, dodging & burning, and upressing (bicubic smoothing). For upressing to a mock 16x24, I am pushing it to the right size with 240 PPI. Sharpending steps are: input sharpen using photokit, UMS , creative sharpening if necessary, and output sharpen using photokit. I know some folks run their input sharpening as the first step out of raw conversion, but I prefer to do all sharpening at the end. Of course everything done in layers and opacity control used to season to taste. I believe thats the right sequence of steps, no?
While I print largely to mat paper (the 2200 does not take kindly to switching blacks on Mac OS), I am experimenting with micro ceramic's luster. Its my impression that I get better results on upressed images printed on luster. Is that the general consensus or am I fooling myself by the novelty of seeing gorgeous density range? Certainly one benefit I would gain from the 3800 is K3 without the awful bronzing on luster and glossy (of course reduced metamarism would be welcomed).