Don't forget I don't print my web images!! ![Cheesy :D](https://forum.luminous-landscape.com/Smileys/default/cheesy.gif)
Well, it is of course entirely up to you, Enda, what and how you print, but printing is its own process, and has nothing to do with
on-screen perception—my opinion remains that at least one of your photographs displayed here is
over-sharpened for its scaling and purpose, hence the halos, which
are visible at 100% view—no magnification is necessary for my not-so-good-any-more eyes.
I think Kirk enlarged part of the frame simply to make the halo-ing more obvious; I don’t think he should be accused of trying to “stack” the conversation.
The aesthetic upshot for me, is that for this
particular image at
this size, on the three screens that I use to get on the web (not all at once!), the rocks look
metallic and
edgy, the sand large-scale
crunchy, and the seaweed too, well,
crispy. I still find it dramatic, but wonder if a less-sharpened version would be
creamier and more
peaceful. It would be interesting to see, for instance, at what point the sand would become a smooth surface with no texture. I think photographers don’t much ponder reproduction at different scales because the camera handles all that, in a complex set of interactions between lens, subject and film, and more recently sensor. Could start going all Nyquist here, but it is relevant; painters have been at the “less is more” workbench for many centuries, and I remain gobsmacked by what a few nuanced daubs here or there can do to create texture and colour that is wonderfully evocative at a “normal” viewing distance.
I adjust output sharpening continually when I process an image at a web-ready size, and find getting a decent compromise can take a number of attempts, sometimes with a end result that is not truly satisfying (I have also been wrestling with sharpening for offset printing for twenty years). That will only change in a positive direction when we have very-high-resolution displays (the 13" MBP I am writing this on has a miserable pixel pitch of 113 to the inch; see other display sizes at
Wikipedia); even the ancient Radius PrecisionView 17" CRT had higher specs! Giant iPhones, anyone?
Would be interesting to know your workflow for preparing images for screen use. I use Capture One mostly, and Photoshop to some extent. I was particularly interested to see that you used no USM in at least part of your workflow; “ …
because of over use of USM which I never use.”. Bit vague, so some explication would be nice. Cheers.
[
added hyphen]