resizing for printing

Will I get a better print if I resize to print size and sharpen accordingly before printing out?

Up to now I have simply worked on an image then sent it to the printer, in the printer properties box I then have to rezize it to fit the paper, even using A3 paper means the image prints at around 20% of its actual size, will I lose sharpness on the print doing this?

I have used an Epson R300 seemingly without problems and recently the Epson1400, always printing using the "Photo RPM" setting and more often that not selecting the print for "sharpness" setting too.

To get the best print sharpness it's always best to resize 1st and then add sharpeness...for the most accurate workflow it's preferable not to let the printer driver have any influence over your print output, best done in photoshop

simon

I have now settled on doing all the manipulations on an image before resizing and then finally resizing to A3 (approx) before storing the finished image as an unsharpened TIFF.

If I want to make a print it isusually A3 so I would then sharpen and print.

If I wanted a web image I would resize, sharpen accordingly (different settings than for a full size print) and Save For Web as a JPEG. The size of JPEG depends upon the file size needed.

Every specific use of an image is custom made from my unsharpended full size TIFF.

By doing this I avoid remanipulating whatever artifacts are created by resizing and sharpening, thus maintaining maximum quality.

I do more or less the same as John (except I do no resizing of the TIFF)

I'm using Photoshop but I expect the work flow is similar in other products.

When I come to print I go into the resizing options box, ensure 'constrain proportions' box is ticked and output dimensions are displayed in metric.

I change the dpi (Dots Per Inch) to 300 for a 'best' print or 200 for a 'good' print (if you are resizing to 20% in the print dialoge you will probably find the dpi is set to 72). This changes the displayed linear dimensions of the picture.

Now I change the linear size of the print. A3 and A4 have an aspect ratio of 1.414 but K10D and K20D are closer to 1.5 so I always reset the short side for borderless printing which crops a bit off of each end of the 'long' side of the picture. But before I do this I note if the short side of the picture is bigger or smaller than the value I'm going to input. For A3 set the short side to 297mm, for A4 set the short side to 210mm. When you do this the displayed size in pixels will change.

Now I choose how the resizing enlargement / compression to be done. Bicubic is OK, but for best results I choose 'Bicubic Sharper' if the linear dimension which I entered is smaller than what was there before or 'Bicubic Smoother' if the entered dimension was greater (I remember which is which becasuse smoother has more letters than sharper so is used for making the print bigger).

Then click the OK button.

The print is then sharpened and printed. (if I save this I would add the paper size to the file name eg IMGP1234_A3.tiff).

During the print preview dialoge the print should now be fitting the width of the paper at 100% and I just need to adjust the position along the length of the paper (by dragging the image thumbnail or resetting the margin.

By doing the resizing this way I retain maximum control over how photoshop does the resizing rather than hoping that what it can do automaticaly in the print preview dialogue will be OK

OK, thanks guys.
I was considering doing a test, printing one out "normally" and doing one after re-sizing but as you well know A3 paper isn't cheap and neither is the ink (now that I'm using genuine Epson:shock

I think the next print will get resized and see how it looks.