Comments on: Applying PhotoKit Sharpener on Export

By: LRN Editorial Staff

LRN Editorial Staff — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 20:42:41 +0000

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

By: dutchkiwis

dutchkiwis — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 18:12:02 +0000

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

By: jhsidoc

jhsidoc — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 14:11:52 +0000

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.

By: Martin Evening

Martin Evening — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 09:12:18 +0000

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

By: jhsidoc

jhsidoc — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 00:39:32 +0000

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?

By: rvphotos

rvphotos — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 00:28:04 +0000

Dear Martin Evening,

Absolutely awesome !

Two thumbs up !!

If your book is as good as these… I’m rushing buying it now, no further delay !

Keep up the good work.

Cheers,
Ric Vieira

By: Martin Evening

Martin Evening — Sun, 06 May 2007 12:08:20 +0000

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?

By: chema

chema — Fri, 04 May 2007 13:53:49 +0000

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

By: Ken Cameron

Ken Cameron — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 06:58:07 +0000

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 :-)

By: Jeff Schewe

Jeff Schewe — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 16:25:03 +0000

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.