Ernie Misner Loc: Lakewood, WA

My D800 files are roughly 7000 px. wide out of the camera. For this shoot I want the finished product to be only 2000 px. What I have been doing is cropping, the immediately resizing (down sizing) to 2000px before doing some basic edits, then sharpening last. Would I be better off to crop, then do my basic edits, then resize and sharpen last? Or would it even make any difference if I resize to the smaller size first or last? Note that either way I would sharpen last. Thanks for your input!

wisner Loc: The planet Twylo

Hi, are you using Lightroom? If so, it doesn't matter the order that you do your edits. Resize when exporting. If using Photoshop, do your edits first; crop,any image adjustments, with sharpening last. Then resize. If you have several images that all need to be 2000px, I find using the Image Processor command very helpful in this regard.
Good luck!

Ernie Misner Loc: Lakewood, WA

Thanks so much Wisner. (a lot like Misner) Did I understand that you would sometimes sharpen before resizing? Is the Image Processor command like doing a batch edit for resizing? I might be cropping each image differently though and would need to resize after that.

wisner Loc: The planet Twylo

I would make resizing the last step. You are correct, the Image Processor is a batch command accessed through either the File menu or Adobe Bridge. I always crop images to their final proportions before resizing.
Hope this helps!

Apaflo Loc: Anchorage, Alaska

The only time I would consider immediately resizing is when there is absolutely positively no way the image will ever be used at a different size. For my work that almost never happens and resizing is always one of the last steps.

What does come immediately after conversion from RAW to a TIFF format is cropping to the desired aspect ratio (almost always 4:5 for my work). The style of editing I do is very much in line with Gestalt Theory of visual perception and it just isn't possible to edit parts of an image without seeing the effect on the entire image in the exact context that it will eventually have. A clear example would be how an object relates to the whole in the sense that the Rule of Thirds guideline teaches. Ultimately each object's visual prominence is affected by many things (color, saturation, sharpness, size, etc) but the relationships between objects change most dramatically with the aspect ratio and exact cropping. Hence I crop first, and fine tune other aspects of each part of the image afterward.

The eventual pixel size and then output sharpening are the last steps because they do not actually change the image but rather just configure it for a specific display.

LFingar Loc: Claverack, NY

I do my editing first, saving it and the original. No telling what I may want to do with either one in the future. I can then crop as needed. There have been times when I have gone back to the same edited photo a time or two to crop different areas.

warrior Loc: Paso Robles CA

Resize last here. Our club web master requires we resize.

Ernie Misner Loc: Lakewood, WA

Thanks for the nice replies! I should have made it more clear perhaps that for this whole folder of portrait images, I want the final output size to be 2000px the long way. There will be many different crop ratios though. So here's a question - if you have two images, both the same except one is a very large and the other a very small file size, wouldn't the small one require different sharpening settings? (and thus need to be sharpened after resizing so small)

Ernie Misner Loc: Lakewood, WA

Very well stated! I appreciate hearing the technical side of why to crop first. Thank you.

blackest Loc: Ireland

Try it and let us know i'd say sharpening is perhaps the last step, consider though selective sharpening with an adjustment brush if you have a nice soft background and sharp subject do you want to sharpen the background too?

Apaflo Loc: Anchorage, Alaska

File size (megabytes) doesn't make any difference for sharpening. But image size in pixel dimensions is very important.

Consider a few things about an image. The sensor has a physical size, and it has a set number of pixels for each dimension. Lets consider only the horizontal dimension (and assume the number of pixels per mm are identical for the vertical dimention). If there are 4800 pixels across an image that is projected onto a 24mm wide sensor, that is 200 pixels per mm. Resolution is measured in "line pairs", which means a pair of pixels. With that sensor you could have 100 pairs of vertical lines per mm that would resolve. A fine textured piece of silk might have that detail (and could have more, but that can't be resolved and instead you may see really ugly moire patterns). And also a course textured fabric might have fewer, and they will all be perfectly resolved. (Lets assume the silk is exactly 100 lp/mm, and the other fabric is 50 lp/mm or twice as course.)

The fine textured silk has a high spatial frequency, and the course texture fabric presents a lower spatial frequency. That is important because what a Sharpen tool does, virtually no matter what type it is, is pick out the higher spatial frequencies and add contrast to them, but not to lower spatial frequencies.

Ahhh, wonderful... so why not sharpen an image as the first step, to get an idea what it will really look like? A lot of people recommend a slight amount of sharpen, and all it does is let you see a sharper image to start with, but has little to no effect on the final product. Why is that? It's because sharpen only works on the highest spatial frequency data in the image. It might, for example in the situation described above, only work on data that is between 75 and 100 lp/mm. That is, it would affect the silk but not the other fabric. And the problem is because at a later stage we will resample to a lower resolution (smaller pixel dimensions) and remove all high frequency spatial data. Which of course removes everything that was just sharpened.

If we resample the 4800 pixel line down to 2400 pixels, there are now only 100 pixels per mm, or 50 lp/mm. The sharpening only affected what was above 75 lp/mm. It's gone.

We have to resharpen after any resampling. So those are the last two stages in editing.

Ernie Misner Loc: Lakewood, WA

You are a wealth of knowledge Apaflo, thank you very much! I looked for some of your photos but you havn't posted any?

JohnSwanda Loc: San Francisco

I always do all my editing first and save the file at the original full size. Then if I want to crop or resize for a specific use, I sharpen for that use, and I save it as a different file name. That way, if I ever want to crop it differently in the future, or need to print it larger in the future, I still have the edited full sized image.

Apaflo Loc: Anchorage, Alaska

Kind words Ernie. Thank you.

Under every post that I make there is a clickable URL to a few hundreds of my photographs, mostly over the past 20 years, but a couple from the 1970's too. Just be aware that the webpage is meant to show off Barrow, not my photography. There are many not so great images because they show something seriously interesting. If you really really want to see my work, schedule a trip to Barrow where there are two or three dozen large prints of my best work on public display. (Clearly not worth the cost of the trip! But other things are, including your own photo ops in a really great place for photography!)

Ernie Misner Loc: Lakewood, WA

I did find your link and have been check out your nice images. Wow, what an offer to make the Barrow trip! I sure will keep that in mind. Right now we're kind of hanging in there with my wife still working. I retired 3 years ago and love it....:)