Plustek OpticFilm 120 and Lightroom

I have a few basic amateurish scanning questions concerning 120 film scanning on my new Plustek OpticFilm 120:

 

SilverFast defaults to 2.650 dpi and so I thought this was the optical resolution of the scanner. But apparently that is four times higher, so

for scans that are destined for say a vinyl LP cover, should I scan at the full optical resolution and then output reduced files in Lightroom,

or will this quarter resolution of 2.650 yield equally sharp scans for my intended use?

 

Also regarding sharpening for offset printing, I have learned earlier that extra sharpness should only be applied when exporting a final

downsized image for printing. But that was before Lightroom which doesn't seem to have any option for applying extra sharpen when

outputting an image.

 

So am I correct in assuming that sharpening normally in Lightroom will not give an inferior result if I export a smaller image file in 300dpi?

If not I suppose I would have to reimport the reduced file and then apply sharpening and save/export a second copy?

 

I have to say that I find resolution and sharpening confusing for scanning. I didn't even think the new scanner was very sharp until I

realized that you can apply a lot more sharpening for a scan than for a digital camera file. Being afraid of oversharpening, it makes me

nervous to apply a sharpening setting of maybe 85 for a scan but it does look OK on my screen at least.

<p>I would another aspect to this. What sort of DPI is the printing taking place? Is it is in 300, 600 or higher? I would recommend that you scan it at a slightly higher resolution than your print requirement and do all post processing in Lightroom or Photoshop. Sharpening is best done after scanning rather that during the scanning process.</p>

I've been away from this type of work for a few years but I would assume that the offset printing standard is still 300dpi. At

least that should be good enough. My question is really if two finished exported images in the same size and resolution

will be different if one was scanned at the default setting of 2.650dpi and one was scanned at a higher resolution? And

they are both sized down in the end?

 

I too have reached the conclusion that it is better to sharpen afterwards. Or rather that SilverFast's sharpening is applied

afterwards anyway, so it doesn't do anything optically and different from Lightroom.

 

But was I was wondering is if it's an OK procedure to apply sharpening in Lightroom until it looks about right and then

export the final image, or if it would be better to export the image at the final size and resolution first and then reimport it

and apply sharpening? I'm aware also that material intended for printing can take a bit more sharpening than material

intended for screen viewing.

 

Thanks. :)

<blockquote>

<p>I have learned earlier that extra sharpness should only be applied when exporting a final downsized image for printing. But that was before Lightroom which doesn't seem to have any option for applying extra sharpen when outputting an image.</p>

</blockquote>

<p> <br>

LR has both capture and output sharpening however the output sharpening is based on inkjet output, not halftone. The workflow is based on this sharpening workflow:<br>

<br>

http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/20357.html </p>

<p>One key is output sharpening to size! LR knows the size you specify and the number of pixels (resolution) and does this based on this understanding. As said, the only iffy part would be using output sharpening optimized for ink jet, not halftone. </p>

<p>There is NO rule or standard of 300ppi data for halftone output! I wish that idea would go away. Find the linescreen of the job, then if it's lower than 150lpi, just double that value to get the PPI (in this case, IF the linescreen were 150, you'd send 300ppi. But if the linescreen is 133, you could and should use less PPI in the scan). Above 150lpi, you can multiple by 1.5X. </p>

<blockquote>

<p>The workflow is based on this sharpening workflow:<br /> <br /> <a href="http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/20357.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/20357.html</a></p>

</blockquote>

<p>Returns a Page not found" error. Was that a link to Bruce Fraser's sharpening workflow? I just checked some links I had to other articles on Bruce's sharpening workflow and now they also return "Page not found"</p>

<p><a href="http://www.creativepro.com/articles/author/127446">http://www.creativepro.com/articles/author/127446</a><br /> Out of Gamut: Thoughts on a Sharpening Workflow<br /> <a href="http://www.creativepro.com/article/out-of-gamut-thoughts-on-a-sharpening-workflow">http://www.creativepro.com/article/out-of-gamut-thoughts-on-a-sharpening-workflow</a></p>

<p>Did something happen to creativepro.com? Are these articles archived anyplace else?</p>