Printing, size and sharpening

InkjetMall Customer Support Piezography Inks & Printing
1

Hi, as far as i understand it a piezography image should not be resized and sharpening should be done so it looks good on screen and not over sharpened.

Thing is sometimes i really do need to print an image larger than native size and i believe that different size print images need different amounts of sharpening, so how does this fall in piezography workflow?

Should i sharpen for screen and when needed do resize in Print Tool (mac) when printing?

What sort of sharpening works best with piezography, PS smart sharpen, PK sharpening kit, Nik sharp etc

thanks

2

You should only sharpen at 100% pixels view or actual pixels view. Any other magnification is a proxy or approximation of your image rather than actually your image - and it will not show the actual results of over or under sharpening.

Piezography will reveal any over-sharpening and any poor masking work, etc… So if you over sharpen at 100% pixels view it will be over sharp. If you under sharpen to your tastes it will be under sharp.

The type of sharpening that works best is skillful sharpening that does not look over-sharp at Actual Pixels View. I find most people sharpen too much. They see how sharp they can get away with and usually this results in artificial sharpness. Yet some people like that look. So it comes down to how sharp that you want it and the only way to judge that with Piezography prior to printing is in Actual Pixels View.

I tend to print a lot softer than most and my work never wants for sharpness - so I caution you to not use too much!

3

Ditto what Jon said. (I think I am in the more sharpening camp.) Generally what I’ve been doing lately is doing up-resing in photoshop with preserve details. (That seems to work.)

best
Walker

4

Sharpening only at 100% view and being careful not to overdo it is good advice for any workflow. The resampling question is more vexed. It’s been discussed here on a number of occasions, but IMHO not to a generally agreed conclusion. Jon has stated the opposite view - e.g. here he says “Do not resize in Photoshop by resampling. Never add or subtract pixels with Piezography”.

In raising this, I’m not trying to be a smart alec or stir up trouble. I do it because there are a number of folk who have struggled to understand the issue, despite several IJM forum discussions. You’ve arrived recently and are expressing views that, on the surface at least, seem to be at variance with the stated IJM position. For my part, I live in hope of getting a response to my 100dpi thread.

We’re all here to learn and help each other, and any light that you can shed on some of these long-running issues would be appreciated.