When I am teaching on the Fotospeed Academy one question that keeps coming up and is covered in our Advanced Printing class is, ‘how should we sharpen our image file for print and how does this change for different papers?’ I have to say it is another hard question to answer, but in this blog and the accompanying YouTube video I want to investigate a few options when thinking about sharpening our images.  

 

Start with a sharp image 

When thinking about sharpening my first tip and most important one would be to start with a sharp image. With sharpening less is more so if we start with a shot that is in focus in the first place then we are 80% of the way there. However, in saying that, by the very nature of a camera's workings, be it Digital or Film there is always going to be softness added to the record image. On film this could be down to the film speed used and the grain of the film. In digital there will always be a softening of the saved image even if you shoot RAW. This is down to the way the camera captures the image on the sensor and in most cases, we will need to add a small amount of sharpening to recover this softening. This process is normally called capture sharpening and will often take place automatically in your RAW converter as a default point of sharpening. In most cases I have come across if the image was in focus when you captured it, this small amount of input or capture sharpening will be perfect for screen use. 

 

Using Sharpening as a tool 

Sharpening is also a powerful tool to use in your editing process. It can draw attention or bring out certain details to make our pictures more interesting. This technique is called creative sharpening and it uses sharpening options as a creative tool. The creative sharpening process normally involves masks and localised adjustments. This could be used to increase the out of focus depth of field effect on a close-up portrait or to make sure one section of our landscape has a little more sharpening creating more depth in the image.  

 

So how much extra sharpening?

When we are talking of sharpening a print, we are normally speaking about a globe adjustment that will affect the image as a whole and adjusting this amount of sharpening depending on the paper we use.  

The amount of sharpening depends on the paper we are using. For example our PF Lustre paper will require less print sharpening than our Matt Smooth Cotton paper. This is due to the makeup of the paper and the way ink interacts with the paper. In the picture below I have made some basic sharpening adjustments in Lightroom and printed an A3 print on PF Lustre and Smooth Cotton.  

You will see from the prints that the PF Lustre has nice contrast, and the sharpness is good. However, on the Smooth Cotton the print is a little flat and very slightly softened. This means that we need to add a little more sharpening if we would like the print to match the screen better.  

 

 

How do we Sharpen? 

 

Final thoughts