hello all, for the sake of not being an ass and posting a question that's already been asked i searched the forum for anything relating but didn't find anything. i just sold my first three prints (major woody.lol) and i found a printer that can do the job as i want it done, no cropping no borders. anyway he had mentioned to me about artifiacts that he's not used to seeing in a digital print, especailly in a 6mp camera. he asked my work flow and i told him all the steps i take when doing my post work. part of that routine is to sharpen and unsharp mask it. that part made him think that's why i'm getting noise in prints. so is it better to not sharpen for the purpose of printing? one other question. when working in photoshop i notice that the photo appears brighter then when just viewing in windows. so when i'm working on an photo for posting here in the gallery i always view in ps as monitor rgb so i can see how it would look in windows. now for prints on the other hand should i just leave it set to working CMYK? thanks in advance for any tips or assistance. sorry also to be a pest but i want to get the best possible prints to offer for sale.. EB

Not that I can help much here,but anxiously await those in the know. I would like to be doing some of this also soon. I already have people who will buy some if my photos,but have not seen the quality on a large image yet,save for my HP printer. They are fairly good quality,but I can see it costing more on ink in the long term.Plus the time of doing multiple prints. Least one thing is that I have some designs of frames which I make myself so that is a plus for me.

here's some good info! :]
hope there's something here that helps

Luminous Landscape: printing & USM ps! congrats on selling your prints! makes you a pro :]

Message edited on: 05/04/2005 20:32

Well that is a useful link for sure. Love the workflow section.

One must be careful when sharpening to not over do it. There are more debates on the correct way to sharpen a photo in photoshop as they are parrot heads at a Jimmy Buffet concert. If I read your post correctly your sharpen and unsharp mask. Never use sharpen, Only unsharp mask. Also view your image at 100% when sharpening. One tip from the Epson Online Experience that I purchased (which was great by the way) was to set the Threshold at 1 and radius at .4 start the amount at 500 and decrease by steps of 100 until you see no white halos around the edges of your objects. Always make unsharp the very last step in your Post Processing. If need be create a duplicate layer, sharpen the layer and mask out areas that don't need to be sharpen. This lets you selectively sharpen your photo. As I said they are many other techniques, but this is what I have been using.

wow, thanks Cyn, you're the best!!! damn Randy, that's mighty useful!!! sharpening is always the last step in my pw. i had got a tip from someone else here on the site that suggested that i sharpen twice then unsharp. not knowing any better i did just that and have been doing so for months...damn it...lol!!! good thing i'm anal and keep the original file seperate from the postworked ones. looks like it's back to the drawling board. thank you both for the tremendous help, your assistance is greatly appreciated!!! eb

You said that you set your proofing (under "view" in Photoshop" to CMYK- I set mine to "Windows RGB" and my images on RR appear just as they are in PS. For printing, (if you ever do yours on your own printer) try the setting SMPTE-C in the Print-Space (my printer is an HP, and those settings work extremely well for me).

As for the sharpening, I do it second to last and at a view size of 100% to be sure I'm not getting a glow around the dark objects. My actual final step would be looking for any artifacting/noise (esp in skies) and making a selection & using a gaussian blur in that area.

Message edited on: 05/05/2005 01:09

i set the view mode to monitor rgb, CMYK is what it defaults to. i've been reading the articles in cyn's link and there is some great stuff there. when less tired i'll dig deaper and try out some of the techniques. that sucks, i've got so many to re-do now...lol!!! thanks for the help DM. eb

why sharpen the image? i never did and my 18x24 came out looking good. they was showing every one in the shop the work. They all loved it

just looked at the link and I find my answer lol

I very rarely use unsharp mask! Most of the time, I do a selective sharpening! I guess it's all a question of taste and it also depends of ur pics!! Unsharp mask works better than sharpening on some pics and vice versa! I don't think there's a particular rule for this!! I'd say do as u feel (see) is best!! Beside, all the advice about these seems to be different! Randy says that the settings for unsharp mask should be "Threshold at 1 and radius at .4" when I read else where that the radius should never exceed 3. So u see, I don't think anyone can really tell what to do exactly. It's just very flexible I believe! ;)

for my last couple posts i did no sharpening at all. after the printing place pretty much roasted my post work technique and said there was an unusual amount of noise for a 6mp camera. so i decided to omit it from the routine and do only the minimal color or grayscale and curve adjustments. so far i'm pretty happy with the way they're turning out... the real test will be when i get them printed. thanks for the replay Pascal, i appreciate it!!! good to see you back btw:)!!! eb

My pleasure dear and ,PLZ, don't forget my "E"! I'm a woman! ;) Hope the result will satisfy u! :)

ooops!!! Pascale...my bad!!! you know us illiterat americans..lol!!!

U said it! ;P LOL!! U're forgiven my dear! Man, I'm so kind! grin

keep in mind a lot of printing places have auto sharpening built in to their processing of digital imaging because a lot of people with digis don't postwork... they just download their card right there at the place of their "snapshots" :]

thanks cyn, that's very useful information! i had no idea of that aspect!!! eventually i'd like to get one of those new epsons with the ultra chrome inks.. when i get the money that is, maybe i'll auction off a body part on ebay...lol!!!

i just remembered it!! good luck on getting that printer! :]