How much is to much

When it comes to sharpening? Is it best to over sharpen if your going to be printing it?

define over sharpen?

Bobster wrote in post #6235010
define over sharpen?

something that just looks like a grainy mess

In my experience yes, it's a good idea to sharpen a bit aggressively on screen, to achieve nice sharpness in print.

After all, viewing at 100% size on screen is 3-4 times bigger than 100% in print.

But you need to develop an understanding of your monitor and printer to know how much is enough. It just takes a bit of trial-and-error, I guess.

hmmm and does it matter what size your print is gonna be?

I'd say it's best to "output sharpen". If you shoot jpeg, the camera gives your image "input sharpening", or if you shoot RAW you typically apply some sharpening in your RAW converter. This is great for uses such as Web display and personal viewing, but printing is a different animal.

Lightroom's latest release (v.2) applies "output sharpening" when you export a jpeg, and LR also applies sharpening for printing. If you are editing something other than RAW in, say, Photoshop, you want to apply sharpening specifically for your intended output.

For instance, if you are printing a large copy, you want to sharpen for that size. For big enlargements, it is often advised that you first resize/resample the image to print at, say, 300 ppi, then sharpen for that image size. You could also follow the same process for smaller prints so that your sharpening will be fine-tuned to the actual print size.

Lastly, test your print before printing large (expensive) or printing a batch. To test a large print, crop out a portion that will print at say 8x10 or smaller at "full size" (at the dpi that you intend the final print to be and resample to) and print it, so that you can judge for yourself how much is enough. This kind of "print proof" will also help you to ensure that your final tones and colors print out the way you intend. Believe me, over time this will save you headaches and money. I print at home at sizes up to 13x19 and the thing I hate is to send an image to be printed at that type of size and then to find out that something was screwy.

wow, great advice tony...complicated but great lol

Trial and error. Just keep the sharpening as the last step before printing.