> Richard Since the standard advice with USM has always seemed to me to be check at 100% on screen do I guess your 50% screen advice assumes a 300ppi file is being used and printed on 150lpi screen? Logically for regular litho work this seems like very good advice. <
Paul, I would not expect or say that an even reduced screen magnification to accurately represent lpi effects, but it can help in some cases (the new view command is good to have two windows in use). I recently posted this message to the Colour Theory list, perhaps it will help: >> After my reply on recovery of poor looking files - I thought I may as well bring up a point for discussion - Photoshop view magnification when evaluating image quality. Most users are aware that 1:1 or 100% view provides an uninterpolated true view of the image content, which is often advised when evaluating USM effects (while the brain does it's trick of factoring in what output will do to the image based on experience). The 50% view is often helpful for helping to see what the expected averaging process of output will do - although even at such as simple reduced magnification there are artifact problems and the image can't be trusted to display repeating patterns or fine detail with accuracy. Often an image which looks like a sows ear at 100% view will output looking much closer to a silk purse - with no extra effort on your part. Even more so if there is more data in the file than required for the current repro size and conditions. Often viewing the original at 50% magnification for most files, or 25% for really large files will do a great job of showing the expected output. I still use 100% view for evaluating USM moves - but I do find that 50% or 25% views can often change how one applies the threshold command when sharpening to avoid noise or grain. I might end up using a 'noisier' setting at 100% view, as my experience and the reduced even view show that this noise amplification makes no difference to the output, even though the same size view may be a little bit ugly. When dust spotting a one off scan that will be reduced in layout - 100% view is more than enough, as you can count on the output process to hide many of the smaller artifacts (unless you are selling a clean scan that is <g>, in house may have different rules than for external clients). Using an uneven view like 66% can amplify some of the larger spots which are worthy of attention, while hiding smaller spots that can be safely missed in the manual cleanup. The same can be said for grain reduction or artifact cleaning - does your experience and a 50% reduced zoom view show that cleaning is required? The 1:1 view can sometimes be misleading, depending on the image and the output and other factors. << Stephen Marsh. =============================================================== GO TO http://www.prodig.org for ~ GUIDELINES ~ un/SUBSCRIBING ~ ITEMS for SALE
