Orchids & Editing for Print?

[ShaneS]

This spray of Orchids was shot at one of our local Buddhist temples on an overcast day and may become my first ever print sale (to a friend of a friend via Facebook)!



When I posted my image in :THE 2013 Shot that means the most to you" thread I spoke about my lack of confidence and frustration with my imagery this year and a desire to get more images printed. Since that first image I have printed about four others with varying degrees of success. This one surprised me in a good way and also provided me with a light bulb moment regarding something that I need to work on or at least understand better.

I hope some of you here will help me out...How do you edit for print?

Here is what I know (please correct me if I am wrong on any count):

1. Edit the image as you would for display.
2. Soft proof the image based on the profile for your printer and paper (I use Costco with Luster paper).
3. Adjust the brightness, saturaation and contrast of the soft proof to match that on the original edit (I place a copy with one set to proof and one as edited for this step)
4. Output sharpen for print (I use NIK).

Here comes the problem...In my original edit the image looked a bit grainy/noisy at 100% but the print turned out beautifully.

I assume that this is because nobody views an image at 100% in real life. If that is true then how the heck do you know what the print will look like when editing on the computer? I have hesitated to send my images to print so often because of this and I wonder if I can glean some tips from others with more experience.

Do you have any suggestions or resources that you can recommend (books or websites) or do I just have to keep printing and compare the prints to my computer edits until I just 'know' how it will print?

[DanK]

Here comes the problem...In my original edit the image looked a bit grainy/noisy at 100% but the print turned out beautifully.

Normally, prints will look less sharp than on-screen images unless you sharpen further for the printed output. I discovered this by accident years ago when I accidentally oversharpened an image and printed it anyway. It looked great. Shortly after that, I found various postings, etc., explaining this. Output sharpening is intended to compensate for this. I don't use Nik for output sharpening, so I don't know what is going on there, but if you are using the screen to decide when there is enough sharpening, that is probably the answer.

If you google this, you will find that people have all sorts of ways to do this. Mine is simple: I print from Lightroom and use their output sharpening. I use your steps 1-3. Then in the Lightroom print module, I add output sharpening and output contrast and brightness adjustments. You can't see the effects of these on screen, so you have to figure it out from trial and error. I find that with my default paper (Moab Lasal luster), the Lightroom "standard" output sharpening looks good. With other media, that might not be the case. For example, I just ordered two large metal prints from Bay Photo, and I had read that the process creates images that look less sharp, so I chose the highest level of output sharpening. The results looked very good. I think I have sometimes used the higher level when I print on matte paper, but I am not certain.

BTW, I now set the output brightness and contrast sliders to 10 for that paper and to 18 for Red River Polar Matte. However, I have not experimented a great deal.

[ShaneS]

Thanks for your detailed response Dan.

You have to figure it out from trial and error

was my biggest fear

I did watch a couple of the NIK output sharpening videos at lunch today but basically they said if you answered the questions (type of printer, resolution and viewing distance) that you just needed to trust the algorithms that NIK has created and print away. I was hoping to see some real world answers and possible examples of an on screen image at 100% and the resulting print so I at least had some visual clues to use as a guideline.

That being said, Costco 8 by 10's are only $1.50USD so it is a small investment while I utilized this trial and error method.

[ShaneS]

After a quick search around the internet I have found two sources that suggest that viewing the image at 50% gives a good approximation of how it will look in print.

"How to judge sharpening for output (it's tricky)

When judging sharpening for print, the image should be viewed at 50% or even 25% (if is a very large image), and not at 100%. Viewing at 50% gives a much better approximation of the actual effect of the sharpening whereas the 100% view will be largely misleading."

The above is an excerpt from a sharpening article from the American Society for Media Photographers. This is quite a detailed article on sharpening and well worth a read.