Sharpen for output: photo enlargement

[willdoak]

I notice on a related thread that someone’s using lynda.com to watch Deke McClelland’s sharpening videos. He follows Bruce Fraser’s four-stage workflow: sharpen for source, for detail, for effect, and for output. The course is geared mainly for output to print images smaller than the original image, where sharpening is needed to counter the effects of downsizing and the softness that printing introduces.

My question is this: what kind of sharpening for output is appropriate when the output is going to be a 16x20 print from AdoramaPix? (They’re on sale for $5 each at the moment.) The output medium is photographic paper, so it’s not inkjet or commercial printing. Deke doesn’t say anything about sharpening for this kind of output.

I’d like to get the opinions of all you sharpening experts. ;-)

Cheers,

Will

[gmitchel]

You need to sharpen for a continuous tone printer. I have an contone output sharpener script in my free set of sharpening scripts:

http://www.thelightsright.com/tlrpro...rpeningtoolkit

Mitch

[willdoak]

Thanks!

Will