Sharpness in magazines?

I've been disapointed with "blurry" images in a few publications. I have been conservative with sharpening in editing, believing it would be best to leave it to the magazine staff. What do you guys who are regularly in magazines say? Roughely how much do you sharpen a 300 dpi image that you're sending in to a magazine?

cheers

You ask a very good question. This is one of the things I struggle with, especially how much and how to sharpen microstock images. Is it better to sharpen in the raw file converter or with the smart sharpen function or with a after market Photoshop plugin?

Christian - you question is sort of like the question, "what f-stop do you use?" There is no one answer.

Your publication should be doing the sharpening. If they aren't doing it right, then it makes life difficult! And if they are doing it... well, then your images are probably not sharp.

If you know the exact size the magazine is going to use your image, then sharpening is relatively straightforward. For Wetpixel Quarterly, we use Photokit Sharpener, which works really well, but we actually sharpen each image individually using masks for selective sharpening. We have to account for what the photographer might have done to the image, first. However, we do often crop in a little bit to fit our layout, which means that if someone had submitted a 300dpi image at the right size, it would now be slightly under 300dpi. Plus, we then still have to do a CMYK conversion (which we like to do first). Not ideal.

We always request full resolution images. We like to get the highest quality original image possible. I have to say that I'm disappointed by full-resolution images a good percentage of the time. Images often look great at screen resolution but are blurry at full resolution. Or, the RAW image looks nothing like the processed image, and the processing was pushed too far, which normally makes CMYK color conversion really difficult. Or, the RAW image was perfectly good, and the processed image has been ruined. Some people like to interpolate their images to a higher resolution and then save as JPGs. Believe me -- once we're done re-sizing and sharpening, you will be able to see those JPG artifacts.

When the photographer fails to process the full-resolution image properly for print (i.e. LEAVE THE IMAGE ALONE), we have to ask for RAW images. It happens about 5% of the time, and we process the images ourselves to match the screen-res submission. This does not ingratiate the photographer to us.

As a general rule, on a monitor running at typical pixel densities, we sharpen the image so it looks sharp at a 50% zoom level. That seems to work well for us. Of course, when you zoom in to 100%, some images can look crunchy, but they'll usually print just fine.

So I guess there are two issues here. The first is that you have to sharpen your image to look good on the screen so someone will buy it. But that image isn't necessarily going to be appropriate for print. If your publisher knows what they are doing, send your slightly-soft high quality originals. If you really want control, find out what color profile they use and what size they will be printing your image, and do the CMYK conversion and sharpening yourself (I don't know anyone who does this).

Its an interesting 'problem'. If, as many underwater photographers do, you submit to stock agencies then the whole process of producing an acceptable files for unknown end use is fraught with potential pitfalls. Personally speaking, I supply several agencies and minimise post processing, use just enough sharpening to deal with the softness attributable to the anti-moire filter, and submit with no up-rezzing. To date I've had none rejected on technical grounds! Sounds like Eric is an 'enlightened' publisher and he's being very helpful in supplying data about his needs. In my experience this is, unfortunately, far from being the norm even when you are dealing directly with the publisher, and the technical knowledge of designers/publishers varies dramatically.

For magazines, I sharpen until I am happy with the image with the expectation that if it is right, the magazine shouldn't need to do anything to it. So far I haven't seen any issues when the image is reproduced in print. The image library which I am with, however, does not want any sharpening done to images or any up-scaling of them.

Yeah, there's not a 'one' answer, but there's at least a discussion. Sometimes life is difficult and sometimes images aren't as sharp as you thought they were Thank's for the input.

cheers

Let's say I were submitting to a publication like Wetpixel Quarterly, could one not sharpen just as one would for a similar print size (anticipating what the largest print size is likely to be) if I were to print it myself? Is one going to lose significant quality if the magazine chooses to print the image smaller? Or is there something different going on here in the CMYK process for a magazine? Alternatively, what about simply submitting more than one image size with appropriate sharpening?

After sleeping on it and thinking about this issue, I have another question for discussion. I cannot find a clear answer in any references I have read.

Is there a direct proportionality of sharpening parameters as it relates to print size? In other words if I sharpen an 8x10 print to taste, and have set certain parameters of radius, strength etc in my sharpening step. Are there then any direct constants of proportionality that I should be able to plug in to my sharpening step if I then choose to print at double the size, triple the size, half the size and so on?

Are their different proportionality constants for radius, strength etc?

Could one then take an automated approach to the process, or is it purely a matter of subjective assessment for every print size?

I also use sharpening tools with large radius parameters for Local Contrast Enhancemnt, how is this affected by print size and submission for publication?

loftus

I'd like to say yes, but.... . I think that there are 'starting points' from which you can then make final adjustments. Exactly where these 'starting points' will be depend on your own requirements and they will be somewhat subjective, but in overall terms I'd say that they are probably somewhat proportional to output size. I find that different images can require differing amounts of sharpening, so its not easy to come up with a 'cover all' set of parameters. Taking an automated approach is okay up to a point but I don't think that its the best solution if you are intending to achieve maximum 'quality' from each file.