Sharpening: NI or Nik?

[jwarthman]

Hello!
As soon as the Macintosh version of Neat Image is available, I'm eager to try it with my workflow. Here, in a nutshell, is my current process:

• - Copy (Canon 1Ds) RAW images to my hard drive
  - Use Adobe Camera Raw to convert (16-bits per channel) in PS 7
  - Use various Photoshop tools to reduce noise
  - Crop, and adjust levels & curves as needed
  - Depending upon print requirements, use Photoshop's bicubic or Genuine Fractals to change resolution to 360 PPI
  - Sharpen with Nik Sharpener Pro

With NI, I expect to perform noise reduction as soon as I get the image into Photoshop, but at this time I would disable NI's sharpening feature. I generally leave sharpening as the last step before printing, or saving for the web. Nik has settings that tailor the amount of sharpening to the "purpose" of the image.

I wonder if anyone here has compared both Nik and NI for sharpening images destined for various print sizes, and for the web. If so, how would you compare the two? Which do you prefer to use under which conditions?

Thanks!

-- Jim

[andewid]

I would not use sharpening in NI at all. It is the wrong place to use it unless you are doing quick conversions of pictures.

[NITeam]

You still can use NI sharpening if noise reduction is disabled.

Vlad

[thierry-l]

in a logical workflow using Nikon D70 RAW, i believed it was
1) Nikon Capture 4.1 to work with NIKON RAW files (adjusting curves, coulour balance, exposition (raw option) without loose)
2) save in TIFF 16bits
3) Use neatimage (only to reduce noise, no accentuation), but the paraméters modified in Nikon Capture will influence the future auto profile in Neatimage ! (is there a solution ?)
3) open in PS, to correct some parts if necessary
4) use Neatimage (without noise reduction) or PS (in LAB) to make final accentuation

what is your opinion, is there another logical workflow
thanks for help

[NITeam]

The workflow looks logical. The sharpening is usually the last step and if you do something to the image after noise reduction, it is better to delay high frequency sharpening (which is usually done by Photoshop) until the end of workflow.

Vlad