Occasionally I write stories for Lexar's web site, in the digital photography tips section (http://lexar.com). I had a note from a reader of one of those stories asking for help getting his prints sharp. He had all the right settings on the camera, and a good printer (Epson Stylus Photo R800) but still wasn't getting prints as sharp as he expected. The answer was in how he was handling his images after shooting them.

All images can benefit from sharpening after capture. In other words, whether you're prepping a photo for email, web gallery or print, a bit of sharpening should be added during the edit stage.

Why? Sharp on screen doesn't always equate to sharp on paper. The cause of this is called "dot gain" in the printing industry, and what it means is that ink is absorbed when it hits paper (even tiny drops of ink on high quality photo paper) That causes the drops to "grow" a bit in size, resulting in slightly soft edges in the image. You can get around this with your editing software.

All editing packages offer some sort of sharpening routine. If you're using Unsharp Mask try a low Radius (3 or 4?), higher Amount setting (maybe around 300 or even 400) as a start. Threshold tries to soften the effect in smooth areas, and generally you keep that in single digits. Or if you have "Sharpen" or Sharpen More" in your menus, try one of them. The trick with sharpening is to realize it's not a one size fits all thing. The amount of sharpening is dependent on several factors, most importantly how sharp you like your prints to look. After that variables like size of print, amount of fine detail, subject matter, paper used and amount of noise in the image all play a part in the decision of how much to sharpen. To accurately see what the sharpening is doing, be sure you're viewing the image at 100% in the editing software. And since what you're trying to do is counter the dot gain, you usually try for sharpening that looks a bit more than you'd really like. Remember, the image will soften when inks hits paper. What you're looking to avoid is a noticeable halo around the edges in the image.

If you want to make the whole process simpler, there are plugins that automate the process. One of the my favorites is Nik Sharpener (www.niksoftware.com), which takes into account all of the above factors, and also lets you tell it what printer and DPI you're using.

Whatever method you settle on, remember that sharpening is always done as the last step. If you're working in Layers, do your sharpening on a duplicate of the background layer, so you can change or adjust it at a later time.

So remember, if you want great looking prints not just good be sure and add a sharpening step to your workflow, and take the time to find the settings that work best for your look you want.