[filmscanners] Re: PS sharpening

["Anthony Atkielski" <anthony@atkielski.com>]

Stan writes:

> What if the image is being prepared for a
> website?

The procedure is the same, but the final size for the image is of course
quite small compared to the original scan.

I do set the JPEG compression a lot higher for Web use than for print use,
as download time is important for Web images, and quality is much less of an
issue.

> Of the three steps--resampling to get the
> right size and 72 dpi, converting to JPEG
> format and sharpening--what is the ideal order?

Saving as JPEG should always be the last step.  (However, my images are
archived primarily as low-compression JPEGS; this isn't a problem as the
vast majority of my final uses involve downsampling the image, anyway.)

Conversion to 72 dpi doesn't do anything, so you can skip that.

Normally I open an archived image and downsample/unsharp in steps until I
reach my final size, then save that.  For the Web, I crank up the
compression to make the file smaller (usually no more than 6 of 10 in
Photoshop 5.x for large images, where quality is presumably more important
than download volume, and often 3 for small images, where the inverse is
often true).

> Should sharpening still be the very last step?

Always.  Sharpening degrades the image, so you don't want to do it until
you're done with everything else.  And I never sharpen scanned images for
archiving; if they need sharpening, I'll do that each time I open them back
up for other uses.  You never know when a specific use might require the
image without sharpening (an image without sharpening is cleaner).

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