Photo Books and Sharpening

Question

I'm unsure about how to approach sharpening of individual photos for my photo books. Here's the workflow I follow to print books at Shared Ink:
Import RAW images into Lightroom 2.
Color Correct/Sharpen images within the Develop Module
Export RAW images as Tiffs at max res and import into an InDesign template created by me. Inside of InDesign I resize photos to the desired size.
Create a PDF of the book and then convert PDFs to JPGS to be uploaded to Shared Ink. (They only accept JPGS from a program like InDesign.)
Here are my questions:
In step 3, when I export RAW images as Tiffs to place into InDesgin, what sort of Export Sharpening should I be using? LR has matte and Glossy, and then 3 strengths of sharpening. I generally print on matte paper so I know I could use matte.
When I finally decide on the size of my images within InDesign, do I need to re-export each image from Lightroom at the correct size? I normally include 100s of images in my books and it would take quite a while to do this.
Thanks, any advice is much appreciated!

Answer 1

kpdesigns492 wrote:
When I export from LR2 and apply sharpening, do you recommend exporting at the full size and then sizing down in InDesign? Or would you recommend saving each image at the correct size from LR2 at the outset?
For the test, I would do a page or two each way.  I think you will find that you can't tell a material difference and thus you can quit thinking about how time consuming it would be (and it would be horrendous in my opinion).  So maybe your test is on 12x12 pages with a background image and three small images on top, one greater than original, one at original and one smaller than original.  Then make a separate page for the following samples:
1.     Export the 4 images from LR with no output sharpening at original size.
2.     Export the 4 images from LR with Matt, Standard output sharpening at original  size.
3.     Export the 4 images from LR with Matt, Low output  sharpening at original  size.
4.     Export the 4 images from LR with no output sharpening at approximately the sizes for the sample page (then use them at exactly the exported size).
5.     Export the 4 images from LR with Matt,  Standard output sharpening at approximately the sizes for the sample page (then use them at exactly  the exported size).
6.     Export the 4 images from LR with Matt, Low output  sharpening at approximately the sizes for the sample page (then use them at exactly  the exported size).
This should give you a good idea as to whether output sharpening has a material impact on books printed from SharedInk.  It may not be a good test for other printing but that's OK.  The idea is to find out what is best for this particular book process for YOU.
Keep me posted.
Jeff