Lightroom and Halftone printing

[keith_plechaty]

<p>I'd like to finish off a photo book I've been working on, but I'm undecided about how to output sharpen all of my images. Can I use the output sharpen option in Lightroom? Many say that this is only optimized for inkjet output though. Do I need to buy Nik Sharpener? Any opinions on this would be much appreciated.<br>

Thanks.</p>

[Charles_Webster]

<p>How is your book being printed? Plates and conventional 4-color offset or direct-to-digital print on demand?</p>

<p>The prepress requirements are completely different, but if you are doing conventional press printing, your printing house should be able to explain their pre-press process and requirements.</p>

<p><Chas></p>

[digitaldog]

<p>The output sharpening in LR is optimized for ink jet which is a far cry from a halftone output sharpening. PhotoKit Sharpener II* which is the basis for the ink jet sharpening in LR has a Photoshop plug-in which halftone (among other) output sharpening routines. You can get an idea of it’s origin by reading: http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/20357.html </p>

<p>*full disclosure, PKS II is a product I am a partner in so I’m understandably biased. </p>

[keith_plechaty]

<p>I'll be printing on an HP Indigo. Do you think Photo Kit would be the best to use for that output?</p>

[digitaldog]

<p>Indigo is a direct to press halftone device. So you’d ideally want a halftone specific sharpening to the output size you’ll send off. </p>

[keith_plechaty]

<p>I am a little concerned that using PKS would not yield vastly different results compared to LR3. I actually did send a few test pages in with PKS and the matte low setting from LR3. I thought the images looked a little more pleasing from LR3. But perhaps I was misusing PKS and needed to scale back the sharpening?</p>

[digitaldog]

<p>The results may not be hugely and visually different on screen, the point is, using a halftone output sharpening that is optimized for that process is the <strong>ideal</strong> way to sharpen for that media. And the only way to evaluate the differences is to output each file to the intended device and view them. You could probably do a test whereby you output the same data with no output sharpening, ink jet output sharpening and halftone and see only slight differences on the print. But one will be optimal if that is your goal. You simply can’t evaluate output sharpening to screen for a printed piece. What ‘looks best’ on screen probably will not look best on print. </p>