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1. Re: Output sharpening in InDesign
[Jongware] Jun 30, 2010 1:23 AM (in response to Marcus Koch)Photoshop seems the reasonable choice to do any image processing in -- sharpening is a basic function, for a photo-editing program, that is.
Why would you think ID CS5 to have such functions? It's for layout only.
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2. Re: Output sharpening in InDesign
Marcus Koch Jun 30, 2010 1:52 AM (in response to [Jongware])InDesign is a layout program that creates output for print. Output Sharpening is a function of the output process, which is way it should be in InDesign. I'm not talking about creative or source sharpening. Lightroom has for the same reason output sharpening (and also some source and creative sharpening).
As a Layout program InDesign can crop, rotate, and scale pictures. Especially the option to scale pictures requires to output sharpen the images. So the option to scale without sharpening is nonsense. The only logical consequences are either to remove scaling in InDesign or add output sharpening.
Furthermore the argument that InDesign is a layout program is lame. Primarily InDesign is a piece of software that shall help to get requested work done. (Even Photoshop can edit video images now). As output sharpening is a basic need InDesign should have it. The only option at the moemtn is to redo all the work that has been done in InDesign again in Phtotshop (scale, change resolution, crop). This is bad, time consuming and stupid. Alone this should be reason enough to have sharpening in InDesign. In short: there is a real need for it.
If there would be a function in InDesign that would work like Link Optimizer, which apparently leverages Photoshop, it would be fine, too, as long as I as a user don't have to do a few hours of tedious, stupid work that should work on a button click.
Marcus
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3. Re: Output sharpening in InDesign
Marcus Koch Jun 30, 2010 1:59 AM (in response to Marcus Koch)I forgot one important argument. It is common to ouput not only for print, but also for online viewing. Especially InDesign CS5 offers a lot of new dynamic features.Output sharpening for print and output sharpening for online viewing are different, also different printers (offset, laser, inkjet) need different output sharpening parameters. So it makes again no sense to have output sharpening handled in Photoshop. This would require to have different versions of the images for each intended output and have to relink the images each time before creating the output. Logically the sharpening would be determined in the output process, e.g. print dialog, pdf dialog. This way there also need to be no sharpening function in the layout part of InDesign. Since output sharpening was focused by Adobe in other products I expected to have it finally addresses in InDesign CS5, too.
Marcus
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4. Re: Output sharpening in InDesign
P Spier Jun 30, 2010 2:09 AM (in response to Marcus Koch)You can file a feature request at Adobe - Feature Request/Bug Report Form, but don't hold your breath. Sharpening is not a trivial operation and requires a whole different set of capabilities for pixel manipulation than scaling, cropping, or rotation, and those capabilities don't currently exist in ID.
I'm a user who also believes in sharpening at the correct scale, so I'd probably welcome the addition, but I don't know how practical it would be in reality since each image is going to be unique and a single setting is probably not going to make you happy. Do you expect to see the ability to individually specify sharpening settings for hundreds, or even thousands, of images in a layout? I agree it's inconvenient to have to do sharpening in Photoshop, but I've never had a problem doing final sizing, color correction and sharpening once the layout is finalized and approved, and I'm surprised you say you can't get the correct size in Photoshop.
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5. Re: Output sharpening in InDesign
[Jongware] Jun 30, 2010 2:13 AM (in response to Marcus Koch)Okay, I think I see where you are getting to (reading between the indignified lines): as images scale up and down inside InDesign, they ought to be post-processed to get a good output resolution (and, apparently, sharpness).
It primarily depends on your intended output. Professional full color printing, black-an-white laser print, jpegs for presentations? InDesign can downsample images automatically if they cross a (user-defined) upper boundary of resolution, but I think that's just to prevent trying to print 2000 dpi full color images. Photoshop offers different strategies for downsampling, but ID does not. Perhaps Adobe is counting on the fact that an image ideally should have a resolution of double the mathematically optimal value. Any adjustments on the single pixel level are sure to disappear in the 'noise' of offset halftone dots (which is fully intended, because the fact that an image consists of pixels ought also not be visible). So to get any visible sharpening, the effect ought to be quite large -- not something you'd want a program to do automatically.
Furthermore the argument that InDesign is a layout program is lame. Primarily InDesign is a piece of software that shall help to get requested work done. (Even Photoshop can edit video images now).
You might as well ask why Photoshop does not allow you to have multiple pages and a full text layout engine -- from a Photoshop user's point of view, Photoshop is the "piece of software that shall help to get requested work done", even when it crosses over into full DTP.
This has been discussed over and over again, and I suspect it will come up until Adobe finally caves in and releases "Photindillyshop", one single program that comes on 4 dvds, uses 10 gig of memory, and takes an hour to start.
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6. Re: Output sharpening in InDesign
Stix Hart Jun 30, 2010 2:21 AM (in response to Marcus Koch)Your argument is interesting but IMO falls over in two places.
- A lot of workflows don't need to sharpen, in fact many avoid it if possible.
- Just do it in a batch in Photoshop. Admittedly I don't know whether this is possible (!) but if Photoshop, 'the' bitmap editor can't do it why would you expect Indesign to?!
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7. Re: Output sharpening in InDesign
Marcus Koch Jun 30, 2010 8:47 AM (in response to P Spier)Hi Peter,
a sharpen filter is just an algorithm and therefore I concider it as trivial, especially because Adobe already has good sufficent ones in Photshop and Lightroom. By what I read output sharpening can be done with a single seeting. Lightroom does exactly this. The setting is different for each output media, of course, but it doesn't depend on the picture. This has to be addrresses in content sharpening step, which can easily be done in Photoshop. Technically there is no problem to have a dialogbox in the print menu that allows to select the output sharpening intensity.
Marcus
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9. Re: Output sharpening in InDesign
Marcus Koch Jun 30, 2010 9:12 AM (in response to Stix Hart)Hi Stix,
regarding your two points:
1) I want an *option* to sharpen. Personally I don't see any reason why I don't need to sharpen for print or screen if the image is resized, which almost always happens.
2) If every image is already in the correct resolution and you just crop pictures in InDesign you can use Photoshop to batch sharpen, but if you scale an image in InDesign and even additionally crop it you need to redo the same steps in Photoshop again before you can sharpen the image. This double work is stupid. It is also not easy. You need to downsample the images to the print resolution to bring down the transmitting data and crop the image the same way or recrop it in InDesign after it has been relinked.
Marcus
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10. Re: Output sharpening in InDesign
Marcus Koch Jun 30, 2010 9:14 AM (in response to Eugene Tyson)Hi Eugene,
thanks I mentioned Link Optimizer in my first post. Unfortunately it uses Apple Script and therefore doesn't work on Windows. It would be great if Adobe would have included something like this in the Design Suite. All problems would be solved.
Marcus
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11. Re: Output sharpening in InDesign
Eugene Tyson Jun 30, 2010 9:14 AM (in response to Marcus Koch)You can just downsample your images when making the PDF. Then use Acrobats touch up tools to edit individual images in photoshop and save them back to the PDF. That way you only need to sharpen the images that really need it, and it should be fairly quick and handy to edit the photos directly from Acrobat.
Although, you should check out the link optimiser I pointed to.
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12. Re: Output sharpening in InDesign
Eugene Tyson Jun 30, 2010 9:16 AM (in response to Eugene Tyson)Sorry - didn't realise you were on Windows _ sometimes I can't read.
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13. Re: Output sharpening in InDesign
rob day Jun 30, 2010 9:51 AM (in response to Marcus Koch)Just to clarify, while you can choose to (or not to) down sample images when you export to PDF, ID doesn't down sample when you scale an image it resizes the pixels (you get a new effective resolution). Sharpening might be advisable after a resample, but if the image is being resized it might not be needed. If the effective res of all the images were in a reasonable range say 200 and 400, you could choose to export with resampling turned off. In that case running an unsharp mask on top of existing sharpening would do more harm than good.
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14. Re: Output sharpening in InDesign
Dov Isaacs Jun 30, 2010 10:51 AM (in response to Marcus Koch)A few observations from an Adobe perspective ...
- Sharpening is a technique applied to raster images to boost apparent sharpness. The fact is that the best way to “sharpen” a photographic image is to properly focus the camera's lens prior to shooting! The sharpening available in Photoshop and other raster image processing programs simply stated tries to boost apparent sharpness by artifically enhancing what looks like object “edges” in the image files.
- Sharpening is image specific. Some images require no sharpening, many benefit from minor sharpening. And of the images that require any significant sharpening, that sharpening is often best applied selectively within the image such as to accentuate a person's face and/or fuzz out an overly busy and sharp background (effectively reducing depth of field). As you may know, Photoshop provides a number of methods of and options within such methods for image sharpening.
- The actual sharpening process is in fact dependent on the resolution of the original raster image as well as the apparent resolution of the image when rendered either on screen or to plate or paper. That apparent resolution is the resolution after any image resampling (either downsampling or upsampling also known as image interpolation) performed by the on-screen renderer or the RIP (for printing). Such image resampling can either effectively erase or exaggerate the results of sharpening done earlier in the workflow. In the latter case, those exaggerated results appear as unexpected ridges and/or light lines in the output.
- InDesign is primarily a layout program with significant support for entry and editing of text and vector objects. Support for raster images is primarily for placement within the document, sizing (including magnification and cropping), rotation, and participation in some special effects available also to text and vector object, in other words operations on raster images associated with the use of such raster images in the context of the publication being produced in InDesign.
- We get enough complaints about the complexity of InDesign as is. Trying to integrate a full Phoshop-like image editor into InDesign would be way over the edge. Furthermore, in most publication workflows, raster images and similar artwork are typically not embedded in any publication file itself, but referenced by links by all publications that use such raster images and artwork.
- Ideally, Photoshop would be used for specifying qualitatively what within an image is to be sharpened, to what degree, and possibly with what method and allow some preview of what the results of that specified sharpening would look like when rendered at a particular magnification. Such sharpening parameters would accompany the image as metadata through InDesign to the exported PDF file and would only be acted upon (i.e., the actual sharpening of the raster bitmap based upon the sharpening parameters) by the renderer or RIP when either the PDF file is viewed at a particular magnification or printed at a particular resolution.
The problem is that the ideal sharpening workflow is not currently implemented by anyone. It makes little sense to try to hack something onto PDF export capability of InDesign to do sharpening when in fact the target display magnifications and/or printing resolution is not yet definitively known. Furthermore, since such sharpening parameters would likely differ from image to image per (2) above, doing a global sharpening of all images with a single set of parameters makes no sense at all.
This subject is very interesting and complex. The OP, FastFeet, does bring up some important points. Unfortunately, a reasonable solution requires “fixes” and new features in the image editing and the rendering aspects of the workflow, not in InDesign, the layout vehicle.
- Dov
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15. Re: Output sharpening in InDesign
Petteri_Paananen Jun 30, 2010 12:17 PM (in response to Dov Isaacs)Everything Dov said is true but I still think that some kind of option for sharpening with Export PDF feature would be very welcome.
It could base on amount of downscaling. If target resolution of exported PDF was 300ppi, a picture that will be downscaled from 1200 to 300ppi would be sharpened more than image with downscaling from 600ppi to 300ppi.... etc... Sharpening would effect PDF only, not original linked images. And of course, it would be just an option, not even default one.
I´m not saying that would be perfect solution, professionals will probably always do their magic in Photoshop, but that would be very handy for semi-pro´s which is likely growing group of indesign users.
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16. Re: Output sharpening in InDesign
rob day Jun 30, 2010 12:40 PM (in response to Petteri_Paananen)The quality gain from from sharpening after a down sample would be fairly subtle, so anyone who thinks it's needed cares about small gains in quality. So if you do care about that subtlety then, as Dov suggests, a whole different can of worms is opened. A blanket sharpening surely would create problems with certain kinds of images—for instance an image that was aggressively sharpened in PS, and then resampled and sharpened again on export.
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17. Re: Output sharpening in InDesign
Petteri_Paananen Jun 30, 2010 12:50 PM (in response to rob day)I´m just wondering which one is better; some sharpening for downscaled images while exporting PDF or no sharpening at all....
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18. Re: Output sharpening in InDesign
rob day Jun 30, 2010 1:00 PM (in response to Petteri_Paananen)I think it could go both ways—sometimes there might be an improvement, but I can imagine cases where the quality degrades. Consider an image shot at 800 iso with significant noise next to an image shot at 100 which is perfectly clean—you wouldn't want the same USM parameters applied to those two images. In the case of the noisy image you could easily end up sharpening the noise and nothing else.
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19. Re: Output sharpening in InDesign
Marcus Koch Jun 30, 2010 3:40 PM (in response to Dov Isaacs)Hi Dov,
I disagree to your points in the way that you are talking about content/source and creative sharpening, which will be done in Photoshop or Lightroom. I'm talking about output sharpening. I wasn't aware about those differences until I read the book "Image Sharpening" from Real World. The new second edition includes Lightroom and Camera Raw workflows.The original auther was responsible for the sharpening workflow that has been implemented in Lightroom 2.
The book explains the different sharpening steps source/content, creative and output sharpening. Source/Content sharpening is done with edge and surface masks and addresses also the noise. This sharpening depends on the picture content and the recording source. Creative sharpening is sharpening for effects. All those steps are done in Photoshop or Lightroom. If those steps are done properly the image can be used in different sizes and resolutions. The only last step is sharpening for output, which can be automated, because it depends only on the output type and not on the image anymore. Every resized image needs to be shapened for optimal display or print. Therefore an output sharpening option in InDesign doesn't require a full fledged image editor and the same sharpening can be applied to all or selected images.
Marcus
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20. Re: Output sharpening in InDesign
Marcus Koch Jun 30, 2010 3:26 PM (in response to Petteri_Paananen)Hi Petteri,
a downscaled image will always look better if it is sharpened.
Marcus
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21. Re: Output sharpening in InDesign
Marcus Koch Jun 30, 2010 4:44 PM (in response to rob day)Hi Rob,
this is correct. But a better workflow would address those issues in Photoshop first. See my reply to Dov. This is content/source sharpening and it includes the handling of noise. The idea is to use edge and surface masks to not sharpen the noise, but just the edges, and protect the edges from the noise reduction blur. Those steps are independent from future use of the image (asuming you don't want a high noise or blurry image for a special effect). So I will use those optimized images in InDesign and now I want to resize and crop them. Those images only need general output sharpening, which logically should be an option in InDesign,because in InDesign I decide the output target (screen, inkjet, halftone,...). This is what my post was about. I was hoping that there might be a hidden option or an hard to find option for PDF creation.
Marcus
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22. Re: Output sharpening in InDesign
rob day Jul 1, 2010 6:36 AM (in response to Marcus Koch)Those images only need general output sharpening, which logically should be an option in InDesign,because in InDesign I decide the output target (screen, inkjet, halftone,...).
Whatever technique you use to avoid noise during USM it doesn't eliminate the noise. In my example of a 100 iso image next to an 800 iso image, the 800 image will still be noisier than the 100 image after the down sample and the two images will respond differently to whatever "general" sharpening is applied.
a downscaled image will always look better if it is sharpened.
If the change from the effective resolution were small—say 325 to 300—an additional sharpening on top of existing sharpening could easily make things worse.
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23. Re: Output sharpening in InDesign
Petteri_Paananen Jul 1, 2010 6:44 AM (in response to rob day)a downscaled image will always look better if it is sharpened.
If the change from the effective resolution were small—say 325 to 300—an additional sharpening on top of existing sharpening could easily make things worse.
That´s why I suggested a dynamic sharpening with PDF export... it could even fire up only if downscaling is 50% or more....
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24. Re: Output sharpening in InDesign
rob day Jul 1, 2010 7:09 AM (in response to Petteri_Paananen)Clearly there would have to be some kind of scale adjustment made, but I think the subjective quality of sharpening would be very difficult to deal with in a page layout level sharpening. You couldn't have parameters like radius and threshold because they are image dependent, so who's going to decide what "generic sharpening" means? Whether sharpening improves an image or ruins it is completely subjective.
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25. Re: Output sharpening in InDesign
Joel Cherney Jul 1, 2010 11:30 AM (in response to rob day)I tell my DTP minions to scale outside of InDesign - like many, I think this is a workflow issue, not a missing feature. The OP raises a valid concern about wanting to sharpen upon resizing, but the way I'd personally want to resolve that is to make a feature request for "Image scale of more than XX%" in Preflight.





