April 4, 2007
Applying PhotoKit Sharpener on Export
Over on the Pro Imaging forum, Chris Terry asks if it is possible to integrate using the Pixel Genius Photokit Capture Sharpener with Lightroom, or does he have to Develop, Export as a PSD or TIFF, apply PhotoKit Sharpener and then re-import the image back into Lightroom again? Or is there an easier method?
Well, in Lightroom version 1.0 you can ‘almost’ completely automate this process, but there are a number of gotchas that might limit the ease with which you can do this, as things stand in Lightroom 1.0 right now. But here is a brief outline of how you could go about automating the process for single images only. The following steps will assume that you already have PhotoKit Sharpener installed in your current version of Photoshop. Although what you will learn from this tutorial can equally be applied to running other types of Photoshop action routines in conjunction with Lightroom exports.
Step 1. Launch Photoshop and record an action in which you simply apply the desired PhotoKit Capture Sharpening setting.
Step 2. Now save this action as a droplet, using the settings shown above. In the Destination section, just choose to Save and Close. Initially I chose to save this droplet out to the desktop.
Step 3. I then needed to place this Photoshop droplet in the Lightroom Export Actions folder. On a Mac, go to the Users/Library/Application support/Adobe/Lightroom folder and place the droplet inside the Export Actions folder. On a PC, you will need to go to the Local Disk (C:)/Username/Application Data/Adobe/Lightroom folder and save there to the Export Actions folder.
Step 4. In Lightroom, now go to the File Menu, choose Auto Import > Enable Auto Import and then choose Auto Import > Auto Import Settings… In the dialog shown here, you will need to establish a watched folder (such as a folder called ‘Watched Folder’ that is situated in an easy to find location, such as on the Desktop). For the Copy To section, I normally have this set to import to a folder called ‘Auto Imported Photos’, located in the Pictures folder. All the other Auto Import settings must be neutral. The File Naming should say ‘Filename’ (unless you wish to rename the files as you export them). And the Develop Settings must be set to None. This is because if you were to set the Develop settings to anything else, you will end up producing an exported image that looks different to the original. In Lightroom you will now be ready to export and then immediately auto import with PhotoKit Capture Sharpening applied to the exported image.
Step 5. We are now ready to run a Lightroom export. Select an image and run a brief check in the Develop module to make sure that the sharpness setting in the Detail panel is set to zero. Now go to the Lightroom File menu and choose ‘Export…’ This will open the Export dialog shown above. For the Destination Folder select ‘Watched Folder’. Leave the File Naming as ‘Filename’ (unless you want to rename). Now choose a PSD or TIFF export file format and configure the Image Settings, choosing a color space and bit-depth etc. In the Post-Processing section, mouse down on the menu there to select the droplet that you had previously copied over to the Export Actions folder. Once you have done all this, now would be a good time to save these customized settings as a new preset. In this example, I saved the settings as ‘Reimport PK Sharpen’.
All I needed to do now was click ‘Export’ and Lightroom would export the image that had been selected in Lightroom as a PSD (or TIFF), apply the PhotoKit capture sharpening routine in Photoshop and save the file to the Watched folder. This in turn would then auto import the image, physically moving it to the auto import destination folder which would appear in the Lightroom Library module Folders panel. From there I was able to select the auto imported image from the Auto Imported Images folder in Lightroom and move it across to the original folder and store it alongside the library masters as a PSD rendered version that had been PhotoKit sharpened.
For most of the above steps you set these up once and you are then all set. But of course, if you are using the Auto Import feature in other ways (such as for tethered shooting) you will be tinkering with these settings and the pain point here is that you would have to reset the auto settings to neutral each time. So yes, up to a point, it can be done in Version 1.0. By the way, John Beardsworth has pointed out to me you can also place an alias of Lightroom in the Export Actions folder so that if you export an image (or a selection of images) from a folder in Lightroom, this action will automatically pop the Lightroom Import dialog, allowing you to import these images straight back into Lightroom again as rendered files such as TIFFs or PSDs, ready for you to carry out work on them in Photoshop .
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The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book describes Lightroom’s features in detail and with photographers in mind. Photographers who routinely work with raw (and even jpg & tiff) images will find Lightroom–and The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book–an indispensable tool in their digital darkroom.
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Very nice to be able to run the droplet during export however it is also opening Photoshop. It puts the photo in the correct folder but open PS and the image is open there as well. What am I doing wrong? Thanks
Good to have the site back up again!
But to answer your question, it may be because the settings when you created the droplet needed checking. Do you have Save and Close in Desitnation?
Martin
Nice tip, Martin. Would the same approach work with Photokit Output Sharpening before printing from lightroom, assuming use of the same resolution and print size in the lightroom print as in the action/droplet?
Ken,
The only thing PhotoKit Sharpener cares about is the pixel resolution (density) and the media (matte or glossy). PKS doesn’t really care about print size.
But yes, the same approach would work but to print from Lightroomn (my general preference) you would need to bring the exported images back into LR.
Thanks Jeff – I now have LR set up to work nicely using separate PS actions/droplets for PK capture and output sharpening. It’s good to have a reasonable workaround for Lightroom’s sharpening limitations, at least for PK Sharpener users (and who else matters?), until we see the improvements to LR sharpening which you have hinted at in the adobe LR user forum. Then there would only be selective tone/curve/hsl adjustments for lightroom to be my 95%+ working environment. I am confident that you be taking care of that as well :-)
Nice tip Martin, but I have a problem as I run it I finish with a file of over 400 Mbs.
Am I doing something wrong? Thanks
If you are creating 16-bit files from a 16 megapixel image image, then you will end up with an image that is about 100 MB in size. If you add Photokit capture sharpen and don’t flatten the image, you may well end up with an image that is much larger in size. The key is to flatten for capture sharpening: either automatically as part of the action or later after manually checking to see if you wish to tweak the opacity of the layers before flatenning. Does this sound like the answer?
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Cheers,
Ric Vieira
Martin or Jeff, I assume you are reimporting back into Lightroom so that you can print to an attached printer. How would you modify this workflow to automate an export to printshop?
The way I see it is if you want to use PhotoKit Sharpener to sharpen for print then there really is not much point bringing the photo back into Lightroom.
What I do is similar to the above. I record an action of a sharpening routine for a specific print resolution and save that action as a droplet. I then place the droplet in the Export Actions folder and reference this action in the Post-Processing section of the Export dialog (see above). This will allow me to export photos from Lightroom that are then resized to a specified resolution and sharpened ready for print. From there I ptint in Photoshop. But you could use another program instead.
Martin
If I do similar to the above to create a sharpening droplet for exporting to JPEG with output sharpening (so in the “file settings” section of the Export dialog in LR the “Format” is selected “JPEG”), first of all is the image first being converted to JPEG in LR, then exported to PS for sharpening? If that is the case I would be better off exporting to PS in PSD, then in the action do the sharpening and also convert to JPEG before “Save and Close.” Any thoughts Martin or Jeff or even better, can you show us as you did above how to do that? Thanks.
Hi all,
With the introduction of LR2 with PK sharpening routines, it seems that photokit sharpener as plugin for Photoshop is redundant.
However, LR2 has only limited capabilities where PKS has many. Is there any reason still to buy PKS?
Cheers,
Ed
Yes and no. You are right in that Lightroom now incorporates the pre-sharpening philosophy devised by Bruce Fraser and I myself now use this in place of Photokit Sharpener. As for output sharpening I also appreciate the ease of using the built-in Lightroom 2 print sharpening and the ability to sharpen Web galleries. However, I still rely heavily on Photokit Sharpener for running the CMYK halftone sharpening routines, plus I also use the creative sharpeners on occasion.
Martin