Preparing Images for Photobook

[keith_plechaty]

<p>I've been wavering back and forth about the best course of action to sharpen images for my photo books that will be printed on an HP Indigo at Sharedink. Do you think the below steps will yield good results?<br>

So far my process has been:</p>

<ol>

<li>Edit images in Lightroom (color correction, exposure adjustments, and capture sharpening, etc)</li>

<li>Output full sized tiffs (no output sharpening) to a folder and then import them into my Indesign layout.</li>

<li>Once finalized, I run a script to resize all images in InDesign to 100%.</li>

<li>I'd like to apply some output sharpening to these re-sized images and was wondering if importing the images into Lightroom and then exporting them with output sharpening set to Matte Low Setting would yield good results. I don't need a ton of sharpening. I'm just concerned that the Lightroom sharpening is not optimized for Halftone output.</li>

</ol>

<p>Thanks for any advice.</p>

[randallfarhy]

<p>I don't know anything about Sharedlink or the HP Indigo process, but I would suggest something more than global capture sharpening>output, such as detail sharpening. Capture sharpening is primarily designed to eliminate the effects of the AA filter on your camera, localized detail sharpening is used to enhance specific areas to bring extra detail to areas you want the viewer to be drawn to, without enhancing other parts of the image. An example would be eyes on a portrait, without sharpening the pores on the skin. Then apply output sharpening for specific purposes. When sending work out, I normally let my Lab/printer do the OS step. For Web purposes, I'll resize and do a smart-sharpen for the output, usually in the range of 60-125% at .3 pixels.</p>

[martin-s]

<p>You will find <a rel="nofollow" href="http://zevrix.com/linkoptimizer.php" target="_blank">Link Optimizer</a> does pretty much everything you want. Export your images at full size, place them in your ID document and the plugin will do the rest.<br>

<br /> On a side note LR's sharpening was designed for inkjet output, but half-tone output as generally used in book printing requires different treatment. Although you might find LR’s output sharpening to be suffucient.</p>