Beware of crop/resize in ACR

[JohnT]

I'm no ACR expert, but I think I've discovered something that's not good to do in ACR: crop/resize your images. Doing so leaves artifacts along edges, especially high contrast ones.

I thought there was a problem with my sharpening technique and it was driving me nuts. I compared two unsharpened 400 x 600 images side by side at 400% zoom (you can barely see the artifacts at 100%, but they print quite well): one image cropped and resized in ACR, the other cropped and resized in PS. The ACR image displayed the problem while the PS image did not.

The positive is I'm greatly relieved to know why all the prints of that particular order came out looking so bad and that the order was only a $50 one. The negative is now I get to reprocess all of them.

Live and learn.

[NoLight]

That sux John thanx for the heads up tho!!!!!

[srwatters]

I never crop until all edits are complete in PS. It gives you so many more options for final delivery. Saving the master in 'as shot' size is my normal workflow, but thanks for the heads up.

[René]

Originally Posted by srwatters

I never crop until all edits are complete in PS. It gives you so many more options for final delivery. Saving the master in 'as shot' size is my normal workflow, but thanks for the heads up.

Me too Scott, but I learned to do this the hard way. I used to crop then process, but I was forced to go back and re-work images because customers ordered a different crop ratio than what I presented to them. I was driving myself crazy until I changed!

[JohnT]

Originally Posted by srwatters

I never crop until all edits are complete in PS. It gives you so many more options for final delivery. Saving the master in 'as shot' size is my normal workflow, but thanks for the heads up.

For portraits, I definitely do this. However, the ones I'm referring to are some shots from a 50th anniversary family event of which I don't think they'll be ordering other sizes.

[jeffkohn]

Interesting, can't say that I've noticed this. I too generally leave portraits un-cropped for printing flexibility. But if I need to level a shot, I do so in ACR rather than rotating the image after the fact in PS.

When you say "cropped and resized in ACR", what do you mean by the resize part, are you choosing an output resolution in ACR other than the native sensor resolution? I never do any resizing in ACR, I'd rather do my own interpolation (if it's needed at all) at the end of my workflow. Maybe it's the resizing that's causing your artifacts rather than the cropping.

[JohnT]

Originally Posted by jeffkohn

When you say "cropped and resized in ACR", what do you mean by the resize part, are you choosing an output resolution in ACR other than the native sensor resolution?

The resizing was a result of cropping a native rez image to 400px x 600px. The problem was likely the resizing part of the operation, which I won't be doing anymore.