Digital BW, The Print

I may not have understood your question.  I use PKS as my sharpening tool, so there is no other sharpening (AN AHA!!!! moment here----while writing the second paragraph it just occurred to me that you may be using Photokit and not PKSharpening--so there would be our communication differences).  Nonetheless, I'll go through how I would work through this.

I don't scan but rather shoot in RAW, convert, do all my processing in PS, then I do a Capture and Creative sharpening in PKS, leaving all my sharpening layers intact and save as a .psd file (I generally lower my opacity on the Creative layer---but judge it at 100% pixels while working on it).  Others may do the 'Capture' sharpening before touching the file otherwise.  If I'm printing from QTR things would change about here (a conversion to gray-Lab since PKS won't work except in RGB).  

If I were using NI, I would do that prior to my Capture and Creative sharpening.  This is just me, but I would do my NI from a duplicate image copy, then bring it in and layer it under the NON-NI file and use masks to selectively choose where NI is needed (for my work, its usually shadows only).    Then I would use PK Capture and PK Creative (or, depending upon the image, I may use PK sharpening brushes)--I usually find that I need to lower the opacity of Creative to around 60-70%.  PK Sharpening is done in a number of layers so I use masking where necessary to use sharpening and the amount where I want it (or, as I said, use the sharpening brushes).    I save this file as a .psd file.  When I am ready to print or upload to gallery, I resize and sharpen accordingly in PK Output (again, judging from 100% pixels as to the opacity of the layers).  

BTW--I don't have NI as plugin, but standalone 'cheapie'.  I do so little noise removal--between the RAW converters good handling of it and being able to convert multiple files and use blending AND the low noise/high ISO with curret cameras I don't feel the need of the more 'advanced' versions.

Hope I have this correct--I reread it and think it is LOL.

Diane
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Diane B. Fields
picnic@...
photo site  http://www.pbase.com/picnic




  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Steve Smith 
  To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com 
  Sent: Sunday, March 27, 2005 3:13 PM
  Subject: Re: [Digital BW] Off topic: photokit and neat image.


  Diane  thanks for your reply I was under the impression that I was going to
  be doing a lot more masking than I did in photo kit alone. A more precise
  question would be how  and when to use these two together at the beginning
  of the work flow. Which one to use first and how to combine neat with the
  capture sharpen. I teach digital photo classes and have a good idea about a
  work flow for digital camera files. I am looking specifically for advise on
  how to use these two with color and black white scans- medium format and
  4x5. 
  * Do you sharpen before PK?
  * Do you turn down smoothing in PK?
  * How do you sharpen after PK and Neat?



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