Sharpening in CS2, why my screen not the same as the print?

[Narcissist]

There are some excellent sharpening PS plugins out there which really makes things easier with different print sizes etc. as well as getting better results than messing around with USM.

Most people seem to use PhotoKit Sharpener by PixelGenius.

[Doug Dolde]

Get Photokit Sharpener. It has sharpening actions for various dpi as well as several printing methods including web display. Best thing since slice bread.

[Ken Lee]

Also, make sharpening, your last step. Otherwise, the effects are tossed out/mixed in with other transformations.

[paulr]

Also, make sharpening, your last step. Otherwise, the effects are tossed out/mixed in with other transformations.

If you're keeping it simple, this is a good policy. When I'm trying to make the best possible print, I've gotten great results by following Fraser and Blatner's workflow-based sharpening ideas. Which basically means different kinds of sharpening (for different purposes) at different parts of the workflow.

They talk about three stages, the middle stage being the most subjective/creative (sharpening things that are actually blurry in the image). I skip this, but always do capture sharpening at the beginning (to recover edge contrast lost in the scanning process) and output sharpening at the end (to determine final sharpness for the specific print size and print process). All the sharpening is done non-destructively on separate layers. Layer blending preferences are set to concentrate the effects of the filter on the midtones (so grain in light areas and noise in shadows do not get accentuated ... this would be reversed in scans from transparencies, but it's the same basic idea).

[Kirk Gittings]

I am a minimalist when it comes to sharpening. Oversharpening and creating visible halos is such an obvious amateurish mistake even on very close inspection. For myself (and some of the best printers I know actually), I do some minimal USM capture sharpen both on scans and DC. I keep one file at the largest size I print. On this file I make a strong High Pass Sharpen layer. For different size prints I adjust the opacity of this layer to aesthetically match the size of the print. HPS does not enhance grain the way other sharpening tools do especially on LF as the grain is so small. Besides that I just "like the look" of this sharpening technique. This simple approach works on all commercial images and all but a few difficult personal images with focus issues or very strong grain. On very grainy landscape images, I do not sharpen the skies at all and may even apply some Gausian Blur to the skies to reduce graininess. On soft focus areas in the landscape I may apply some additional local sharpening as others have mentioned above though I do this as a hard edit, a permanent part of the file.

[Marko]

Then there is also edge sharpening, which targets only the sharp edges and details in the image but leaves large areas alone. It's more involved than most other methods but it is also the most controllable and the results are usually well worth the trouble. I believe the method also came from late Bruce Fraser.

[Kirk Gittings]

For clarification, HPS is a form of edge sharpening, as explained by Fraser too, the technique Marko is talking about is a bit more involved and from my experience most useful on small format, noisy images. For large format I find it unnecessarily fussy and involved.

[Marko]

For clarification, HPS is a form of edge sharpening, as explained by Fraser too, the technique Marko is talking about is a bit more involved and from my experience most useful on small format, noisy images. For large format I find it unnecessarily fussy and involved.

True. The technique is especially useful for high ISO digital images, 1600 or higher (or scanned large grain film, for that matter). Parts of it could easily be automated, but the key is the interaction part, where the mask is tweaked to suit the particular image.