Sharpening for print

I took the print below as the starting point for this exercise and then made three more versions with increasing degrees of sharpening i.e. 30, 50 and the most aggressive at 130.
The idea here was to compare the different versions with each other and the on screen versions to see how they differed.



P639
 

Even using a magnifying glass on the prints and 100% online magnification, the differences were not that clear to me. Maybe the choice of print was not an ideal one to use for this exercise or maybe the whole thing was complicated by my varifocal glasses and lack of a decent magnifying glass.That said, what did I discover?

Well, looking at the area of the eyes in the prints, I could see a thickening or distortion of detail as the degree of sharpening increased until at 130 it looked very 'rough and ready'.
The material of the fleece on the shoulder also became more textured too. I could not easily compare print with screen images but looking just at the online versions confirmed the same changes. On balance, I think the 30 level of sharpening would probably be best for this particular image but I can see how this would always differ according to image and the desired outcome...