Unsharp Masking, Smart Sharpen, Hi-Pass sharpening*, and of course Layers/Masks make Photoshop a much more powerful tool than Lightroom. If you want to optimize for really large prints, do it in PS and forget about LR. It's a pain bouncing around programs anyway IMO, especially with large files.
*This is a technique, not a sharpening algorithm. Google it and learn the technique, and then you can make a simple Photoshop Action to perform it quickly. This type of sharpening is very powerful.
I agree that Photoshop is much more powerful for working on individual pictures than Lightroom, and you're probably right about the annoyance of switching between programs.
and I'm quite familiar with those sharpening methods you mention (huge fan of highpass filter turned way down below 2 with the layer mode set to soft light and then applying it only to select areas with a layer mask)
But I don't think any of them they can do exactly what the sliders in the 'detail' menu I mentioned do, or at least I'm curious enough to want to run some tests and see some results on paper. I know photoshop has noise reduction too, but as I mentioned earlier, I was so impressed with the results on my digital files (from my Sony mirrorless) adjusting those sliders in LR, it seemed like you could target specific issues with the file (like color noise) in a more specific way....and basically start the files off in a better way in terms of optimal sharpness and noise. I know this is counter intuitive to everything about only using sharpening at the very end in photoshop, I would likely still do that too, but this seemed (in the digital file at least) to make a better starting point to my eye.
I do like the color noise slider in LR for digital images. Personally I don't like the normal noise reduction in LR - it seems to mess too much with fine detail, making everything turn to mush, but that's an observation I've made working on digital files shot at higher ISOs (yes, obviously those have less detail in general).
I've honestly never tried it with film. I've never opened a film scan in LR. I imagine there will be a lot of differences between film and digital images. Good luck and let us know how it goes!
I frequntly import files over 1 Gb into Lightroom.
6x17 negatives (Fuji G617) scanned at 3500 dpi (roughly 10,500 pixel long by 3,500, 16 bit color)
Honestly I don’t need all those pixels, because the maximum lenght I print is 22”. But you never know for the future...
Problem for me is my filed start as 4GB in size and grow from t. Also, it is not as robust or as powerful as PS. It is good for native digital fils and 35mm film scans and even mf, large format not so. I have processed gilss upwards of 80 GB in size. But there are tricks to work on a smaller version and end up with the full size file when using PS.
I also use Hi-pass almost exclusively and target mostly midtones with it, but also use it in several layers and mask out areas I don't want affected by the Hi-pass. The amount you adjust is really based on file size. I typically adjust till I can just make out small change and not much more.
I do not use LR nor PS to invert any negative. I use Colorperfect to do so. I don't like their results, too much work.Originally Posted by faberryman
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