Output Sharpening for 600 ppi files for Canon iPF5000 ?

[Tony Bonanno]

Dear Pixelgenius gurus,

I'm currently using a 17" Canon iPF5000 printer in my studio.

With the new printer, I'm using the 16-bit Photoshop plug-in that uses 600 ppi files. The Canon plug-in will automatically resize the file to 600 ppi, but I find it works better to uprez with bicubic smoother before importing into the plug-in.

I usually use Photokit Output Sharpner as the last step before printing, but in this case, since there is no "set" for 600 ppi, I was curious as to what the Pixelgenius crew would recommend ? Use the 480, or 300 settings on the 600 ppi files ??

Thanks in advance for your help ...

Tony Bonanno

[thompsonkirk]

I hope we get an answer to this from a Genius!

In the meantime, I've been trying a different way: Output Sharpening the 300 ppi files @ 300 ppi PKS setting, & then changing image size to 600 ppi.

(The 600 ppi files are a heavy load to work with: Genuine Fractals was my best res-ing up tool (for Mac - no QImage), but it's just too slow on that big a file & I've had to fall back to Bicubic Smoother.)

Kirk

[davewh]

Tony,

You beat me to it! I was going to ask the same question. I've been using the 300 ppi setting after uprezzing. Perhaps I'll try Kirk's suggestion and try the sharpening before uprezzing to see which gives the best results.

David White

[Tony Bonanno]

Hi David, Kirk,

I guess sharpening at 300 ppi before uprezing to 600 and then printing is a possibity. Will try it when I get some of my backlog cleared here. I suspect though that the answer we need will be the PG crew doing their magic and creating a 600 ppi set for PKS.

Tony

[davewh]

I suspect that we may have to exert some patience on this issue since I suspect that Bruce was the driving force behind the PK Sharpener software and it will probably be a while before any further development is done on the package.

[thompsonkirk]

David is right - this minor inconvenience is a small part of a large loss.

In the meantime, I have to say that I'm not satisfied with my own experiment (above). When I sharpened @ 300 ppi & then up-resed with BiSmoother to 600 ppi, I was satisfied as long as I was printing architecture & landscapes. But I had to print some photojournalism stuff yesterday (10MP files, low ISO, 9x13.5" prints - not too demanding). I found that sharpening @ 300 & then up-resing messes up skin texture - faces developed splotchy complexions that looked like a colorful version of Tri-X grain.

I'll try Tony's suggestion & make a couple of test prints sharpening @ 300 & 480 on 600 ppi files. If anyone has come to a conclusion aboout which works better, please post.

Is there another sharpening tool with a 600 ppi setting? I doubt it. The only other one I have is Nik, which contains no direct settings for resolution - though it does have a generic setting for Canon printers. I found the Nik adjustments for sharpening % too gross for close control & would much prefer to work with PKSharpener.

Kirk

[thompsonkirk]

I got this reply on the iPF5000 WikiSpace forum. It may be of use to us here, because it has info on the way res-ing up interacts with sharpening (though the writer doesn't use PK Capture Sharpening):

One thing I found is that the differences were extremely subtle
between say 300 and 480. Since I understand that the final
sharpening is done at output size, I just resize to proper size
and 600 ppi in Photoshop with bicubic smoother, and use 480
glossy inkjet sharpening as the final output sharpening. That
combined with Capture Sharpening using EasyS from
Outbackphoto.com (before the uprez) using Low or Normal with
Halo Control has produced pretty good results. This is on
images out of RSP (usually Low capture sharpening) or LR (Low or
Normal Capture sharpening). I am not a fan of the Capture
Sharpening from PK Sharpener since discovering the EasyS
sharpening.

Previously I used Qimage with Vector interpolation at maximum
PPI available and final output sharpening with "Smart Sharpen"
and set to one notch below the default. While this produced
very slightly sharper images, I also discovered recently that
artifacts are sometimes introduced (visible on print) that
weren't in the original image. Since Qimage is not a good combo
with the 16 bit Photoshop plugin, I have abandoned it for other
methods.

Of course, I am open to new ways of doing things :-)

--John

[Tony Bonanno]

Hi Kirk,

Interesting post. I think I'll just continue to try working with the 480 output setting and see how it works with the 16 bit plugin. Seems like that is the consensus for the moment.

Happy Holidays!

Tony

[thompsonkirk]

Yes, that is the consensus, after quite a bit of discussion (some of it without understanding the question) on Luminous Landscape forum:

http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/...opic=13806&hl=

[Tony Bonanno]

Yeah Kirk, I noticed the LL thread and its just seemed to confuse things a little more :-)

Tony