# Sharpening only once for unknown destination



## Linwood Ferguson (May 2, 2014)

I've long been told that one should sharpen in the develop module to a point, then do output sharpening based on the eventual destination media.

OK... so what do you do when that's not practical? 

Scenario: I upload my images, full size, to Smugmug for people to either view, or download for other use.   Most of this "other use" is usually an image downloaded from there, and then incorporated into another web site (sports team, college, etc.).  Some of it is print media - appearing in newspaper or occasional magazine; some news print is color some isn't.  Some are downloaded to produce prints (notably those framed ones handed out on Senior Day at universities). 

Finally, the way I upload to Smugmug is with their plugin, which does NOT permit output sharpening to be applied during the export/publish.  Not necessarily a bad thing considering I don't know the final destination.​
So my question is, when one is NOT going to output sharpen -- should I be over-sharpening a bit in the detail pane?   More than what I would apply if I was using output sharpening?   Is there any guidance for how much to over-sharpen?   Or am I just thinking of it all incorrectly anyway? 

I should note that I do not precisely sharpen even now, except on a rare shot, so all this may be more theoretical than practical.  For any event, at least for similar shots (e.g. baseball infield) I tend to put in the same sharpening and noise reduction over the whole array of shots (noise split off by high and low ISO if it's a at dusk game that changes).  

I'm just wondering how "unknown destination" should affect what one does when sharpening.


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## Victoria Bampton (May 3, 2014)

Hi Linwood

I don't use the SmugMug plug-in, but wondered if Jeffrey's more advanced version might allow export sharpening.  If I didn't know the output, I'd sharpen normally in Develop and then apply Glossy Standard export sharpening - it's about as middle-of-the-road as you'll get.


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## Linwood Ferguson (May 3, 2014)

Victoria Bampton said:


> Hi Linwood
> 
> I don't use the SmugMug plug-in, but wondered if Jeffrey's more advanced version might allow export sharpening.  If I didn't know the output, I'd sharpen normally in Develop and then apply Glossy Standard export sharpening - it's about as middle-of-the-road as you'll get.



Thanks.

I used Jeffrey's for years, but switched when Smugmug changed their system.  They (shame on them really) have yet, almost a year later, to release a new API specification for the new system, so there's a lot of things that Jeffrey's cannot do correctly now.   But I suspect it does do sharpening, as the Flickr one does (which I have loaded and so could check).  He's also pretty frustrated with them, since he was a huge javascript contributor to the Smugmug community, and then they banned Javascript.

I have been very impressed with Smugmug's.  They have a developer working on it that has added all the new bells and whistles for the new format (having obviously the advantage of access to the new API).  So I'm not too inclined to go back, unless/until they give him a real API and he gets interested again.

But that aside -- so if you can NOT do output sharpening, but if you normally would use glossy standard -- how would you say to best simulate this in the develop module.  Crank in another few points of luminance, or is it more to do with radius and detail?  Or is it just a whole different concept and I should forget about trying to make up for the lack of output sharpening?


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## Victoria Bampton (May 4, 2014)

It might be interesting to ask Smug up if their printers apply any sharpening when printing - I've used labs in the past who automatically add it. Otherwise, yes, you could bump it up a bit in develop.


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## Linwood Ferguson (May 4, 2014)

Victoria Bampton said:


> It might be interesting to ask Smug up if their printers apply any sharpening when printing - I've used labs in the past who automatically add it. Otherwise, yes, you could bump it up a bit in develop.



I did before posting here.  They do not.  Or more precisely they say "the original file is what gets sent to the lab" without sharpening, they apply sharpening only when resizing for display.  Now I guess some labs, e.g. Bay when they do their custom work, might sharpen, but the automated ones appear not to.

I'm looking for the "bit" button.


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