One Inkjet Print (continued)

Time to decide on cropping:

As I mentioned earlier, I want the sense of the chair, but not too much. I also want the pepper shaker a little closer to the bottom of the frame. So crop.

So now we're getting close. We've got a b&w file (still in RGB mode) and it's time to apply some sharpening while we're still at full resolution.

If this were a film negative, there would be a bunch of dust-removal stuff you'd do first, but the digital is clean.

Enter the next Plug-In: PhotoKit Sharpner (It's run from the Automate menu)

Again, there are a myriad of choices here, but the first sharpening step is really to correct and sometimes smooth - the image at the full resolution to make up for whatever has been lost in the transfer from the lens to the sensor. Or if you are scanning a negative, same concept. Whatever has been lost between the negative and the scan. It is minimal. And it is not geared towards any particular output device.

What I like is that it is "non-destructive." It does it's work by adding layer masks which can then be fine-tuned. It is important, if you are going to do any sort of cleaning up to the image, scratches, moire, whatever to do this before you run the first sharpner, otherwise whatever glitches you have in the underlying layer will be copied to the sharpening layers. In other words, you don't usually want your dust specs sharpened.

So now you have your black and white conversion, with the first sharpening applied. Now you get to the creative part - which is deciding how the print is going to look.

CONTINUE TO PAGE 4

Making One Inkjet Print on the Epson 4800 Printer