Lightroom workflow, sharpening questions

[Jimlevitt]

I've read the relevant stickies, but I've still got some questions about Lightroom workflow. I'm using ACR/PSCS3 at the moment. Held off buying Lightroom until I got a new computer, which is now in place.

Currently I open my raw files (from Bridge) in ACR. Do the raw conversion, including some minor capture sharpening, in ACR. Save the file as a 16-bit tiff. In Photoshop I may do some curves work to add a little "pop" to the image. Later, since the end use (either web or print) requires a jpeg, I'll resize, sharpen, convert to 8-bit, convert to jpeg. Actually, I have Breezebrowser Pro do those final steps in one batch, very easily.

But this workflow takes up a ton of hard drive space. I'm working through a one-week project right now of over 2000 images. Each one of them produces a 55-60mb .tiff file, just so I can then produce a low-res and high-res jpeg.

If I switch to using Lightroom, can I save the raw conversion instructions, and just output the jpeg files that I need? Where and how does overall output sharpening get applied? I understand that any area-specific sharpening would still have to been done in Photoshop, or does the new version of Lightroom allow for this as well? Will a plug-in (such as the Pixel Genius sharpening software) eventually be usable within Lightroom?

If sharpening cannot be done before the file is output as a jpeg, isn't there a quality penalty for sharpening and re-saving a jpeg file?

I'm looking to speed up the flow, and cut down on the storage requirements.

Thanks in advance,

Jim

[Jimlevitt]

anybody?

[eddarr]

One of the best things about LR is how it can reduce your harddrive space usage. Editing the raw files in LR and then only outputting the images that you need to.

You can view the sharpening in LR but it will not be applied until you export the file. The sharpening is one of the things many people complain about in LR but this may have been improved with V2. You can export the images as a 16bit tiff from LR. You can still do the PS work just like before but you don't have to save every file as a tiff saving a lot of space.

[bacchanal]

LR 2 has both capture sharpening and output sharpening. Output sharpening is applied when the image is exported and is based on the type of media (print or screen). There are 3 levels of sharpening for each media type. The adjustment brush also allows for local sharpening.

Obviously this doesn't give you the kind options that you would have in photoshop, but I find the LR sharpening is adequate for most images.

In most cases there is no need to create multiple files.