Glossy Magazine Print - Sharpening Pre-press

[cappoldt]

When starting with sharpening, I used USM, but often over-did it. I've

switched to scripts, using capture and output settings that came with

the software. My question is, when sharpening to output for 300dpi

CMYK magazine print, what settings should I apply? Matte? Glossy?

Inkjet? Continuous Tone?

 

I'm using thelightisrightstudio.com's sharpening kit, not unlike Nik.

[Ed_Ingold]

Talk to the publisher. Most prefer to do the RGB to CMYK conversion themselves - sharpening too. CMYK is more than colors and a tag - it involves inks, dot gain and other printing characteristics.

[cappoldt]

Yeah, that's what I was thinking - and guess indeed the best answer would be held there. I've seen the pub's submitted works, and with it a wide variety of both under- and over-sharpening, and am trying to think of a tactful way to approach them about it. Easier to dodge the bullet here, though, if there are answers to be had...

[alice_guy]

Industry standards often denote no global sharpening, allowing the client / designer to do the sharpening for size themselves. In practive this is a different story as many of the designers I have supplied to in the past have either been unaware of the need to sharpen, or have said they don't bother. Not all of them, but some.

 

As you may guess, I've been very annoyed with the "soft" state some of my images have ended up in print, with my name next to them, which, to those unaware of design, print process, just refelects badly on me.

 

See if you can talk to who does their layout / design / pre-press finishing.

 

Also, there are many different types of CMYK conversions specific to print output and unless you know how they're going to print you won't get it exactly right. Whenever possible I always supply Adobe RGB. If CMYK is requested I ask them to specify which CMYK. Often they don't know either and just ask for "uh.. normal CMYK". Needless to say I have also seen very bad CMYK conversions done by designers I have had to hand RGB versions to. Washed out blacks / density etc.

 

A good designer friend of mine who actually does a very good job has stated many a time that photographers are "very picky about colour", in his opinion overly so. He always gets excellent results though.

 

Contact them and try to get as much info as possible. Good luck.

[ransomsix]

We publish a magazine out of my studio. I also contribute to a lot of different newstand mags. If you're sending files, I'd talk to the publication before hand. While lots of them like digital for it's simplicity these days, many don't know how to handle files. They'll slap them in thinking they're ready to go. A very small percentage of art directors and designers really understand what needs to be done.

 

The problem with sharpening before hand lies in the fact that you don't always know what size an image will be used, and you also run into the chance of someone resharpening, and causing the oversharpened look. I always send unsharpened files, but if it's a new client we have a small one-sheet with file preparation suggestions on it for sharpening etc. It's amazing how many people don't understand that process, but are ultimately handling the images.

 

When we sharpen for our magazine there's no hard and fast rule. The amount varies from camera to camera to get the desired look. We do all of the sharpening in CS.

 

I would send your images RGB and let them do the conversion based on their profiles when submitting.

[cappoldt]

Thanks Alice and Jared. I'm a little shocked, but now much, to read about the lack of info at the hands of the designers. I supose it shouldn't be surprising, as they're designers - not photographers, and not printing photos all the time - the over/under sharpening I'm seeing in their pubs are certainly indicitive of mishandling.

 

As Alice stated, part of my concern is potential for annoyance (and selfishness) - I don't want to see an over-sharpened, or worse, soft image with my name anywhere near it if I can help it.

 

I'd planned on sending them files sized at 8x12 in RGB Tiffs, uncompressed, for Mac, per their request.

[ransomsix]

There's a good reason. I went to school for design actually and art directed a magazine before I became a serious photographer as well. Designers, especially ones who were trained more than 2 or 3 years ago aren't accustomed to dealing with images. Prior to a few years ago, all images went to a service bureau to be drum scanned. Images handled that way are scanned based on the size they will be used, and the prepress people on that end typically handled all the major production issues from correction to sharpening. That still happens with film work, but a lot of art directors are skipping the production prepress experts and doing it themselves, but not really being experienced or educated in what has to go into it. Some of the larger publications still have people that do all this work, but smaller ones the designers are doing it all, and it's hit and miss.

 

For these reasons, even with my larger publishing clients, I rarely send Raw files, and always do color and processing here in the studio. Often I even send sharpened versions in three sizes, in addition to an unsharpened TIFF. There's still room for screw ups, and they happen, but it limits them. Art Directors still often request Raw files, but usually they're more than happy I'm doing it myself and doing it properly. Sending a Raw File is like sending a negative and saying "print this subjectively yourself." Raw Files are digital Negatives. 50% of them is what happens after the fact, and you're leaving it open to interpretation. That's another issue all together though.

 

It just comes down to the fact that digital has only recently become widely accepted in publishing of magazines. They're still learning.

 

With our magazine I ask for processed Tiffs as well as Raw files if possible. that way I see the image as they see it, and if they've monkeyed it up for press I can correct it with the Raw file.

[cappoldt]

Thanks Jared - great insight. I wrote them, will go by their reply. If they ask for RAW files, they'll get finished tiffs as well.

[Tim_Lookingbill]

A formula for sharpening can be based on the lpi=(133?, 85?) to

pixel count. The idea is you want to have some dot show up in

the halos and if the halos are wider than 2 pixels=(2 pixels to

each dot at 300ppi) you want to dial back. A good way to tell

would be to zoom in on these halos to where you can see each

pixel and sample the area to make sure the halo didn't go

completely white or black depending on the edge type.

 

Depending on lpi and whether you're printing to coated or

uncoated like newsprint=(requiring more sharpening than usual

because of reduced dynamic range) adjust accordingly. In other

words you want images destined for newsprint to look a little

extra crispy and less so for coated stock.