Lightroom - Sharpening when exporting... worth it?

cambsno

cambsno

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When you export in LR, there is a box to tick saying to sharpen, then you choose screen, matt or gloss. Do these have a good/bad/any impact on printing, or is it just for pixel peepers?
 
on which settings Pete? I found they came out pretty much over processed on one of the settings :n:
 
When I export I normally export at 100% quality, full size at 300dpi. Prints are generally fine, but if it gives me a bit more oomph then great!
 
Well, personally I never bother cos I always Automate (Batch) them through PS CS3 anyway. They first get a general sharpen, then I then go through them again, quick scan, and if there any that need a bit more I do them again seperately.

It would also depend if there is any noise to deal with, unless of course your gonna try and deal with this in LR. If there is noise this would normally need to be dealt with before a sharpen and for noise you'd use another program like Noise Ninja, neat image or whatever.

As a sharpen should be the very last thing you do. Exporting out of LR with sharpen on will only make the noise worse!

I think it is down to personal choice and personal workflow. :shrug:

I resize to 600px (long side) @ 72dpi for web and use the Screen/Standard sharpening! Its very good I think!
Click to expand...

agreed if it's for web only.

Thats how I work.
 
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I resize to 600px (long side) @ 72dpi for web and use the Screen/Standard sharpening! Its very good I think!
 
does lightroom have unsharp mask?

also ive noticed in LR, when using noise reduction the effects differ from a JPG or RAW file, or is it just me:shrug:

wes
 
If you're using Lightroom 3, then you can (for all but the noisiest of photos) use the built in noise reduction which has some advantages over the standalone software (most notably speed!)

If when you export from Lightroom the files you are producing are the finished product, then sharpen. If you are going to do more editing (e.g. in Photoshop) then don't sharpen.

Whatever you do, the last stage when producing the finished file should be to sharpen.
 
I always do a batch sharpen anyway in Lightroom, so don't apply any further sharpening when exporting. I also find the LR noise reduction to be just as good, if not better than most of the other noise reduction software out there.
 
westley byford said:
does lightroom have unsharp mask?

also ive noticed in LR, when using noise reduction the effects differ from a JPG or RAW file, or is it just me:shrug:

wes
Click to expand...

Lightroom doesn't have unsharp mask - it has capture sharpening in the Develop module, and then can do a final sharpening on export. The final sharpening doesn't have much in the way of options (just 3 levels of presets each for screen, glossy and matt) but it works very well for 99%.

The noise reduction in Lightroom uses a different process for jpegs and RAW. When used on RAW (as far as I understand it) it actually adjusts the demosaicing of the RAW file, which has the effect of reducing the detail lost by noise reduction. With JPEGS, it works more like NoiseNinja et al.
 
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cheers:D

also back to topic, what options was the OP refering to? I:E levels.

i currently have them set to.....screen...standard.. and think its ok! :)
 
I very rarely use anything other than standard (mostly because I batch export so average sharpening level is good). On the odd occasion that I have used low and high settings for export sharpening I've found it's a fairly subtle difference anyway.

The difference between the screen option and the glossy and matte options is significant though - the approach to sharpening for screen and print is quite different.
 
I've just done some tests using it. I've got to say the Screen sharpening is really rather good.

But you can make you own minds up... here's the original image resized to 800px on the Longest Edge
JL8B4863.jpg


Sharpening - Screen: Low
JL8B4863-2.jpg


Sharpening - Screen: Medium
JL8B4863-2.jpg


Sharpening - Screen: High
JL8B4863-4.jpg


So for web sharpening it's pretty good... although I find the High setting just a touch too high for my liking...
 
Now on to the FULL RES images, here are the original full sized image was processed then the crops uploaded here...

Original 100% Crop
100-FullRes-JL8B4863.jpg



100% Crop from Sharpening - Screen: Low
100-FullRes-JL8B4863-2.jpg


100% Crop from Sharpening - Screen: Medium
100-FullRes-JL8B4863-3.jpg


100% Crop from Sharpening - Screen: High
100-FullRes-JL8B4863-4.jpg


So it does a pretty good job without going over the top!
 
Thanks for taking the time to upload those - very helpful for anyone who comes across this topic while searching!
 
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