What is causing this print problem?

A street portrait

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A street portrait

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A street portrait

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A street portrait

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img746.jpg

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Brentwood Kebab!

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horacekenneth

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The file is a 35mm negative scan from a Pakon. It isn't a crisp hifi image to begin with but the result I'm getting from a professional print shop is far far worse. I edited in lightroom and originally I used lightroom's sharpening for print, then I tried no sharpening. The DPI (or ppi?) was set to 300 or above, I don't recall. Here's the original file (downsized for upload).
Changelings-11.jpg



I'm putting it into a book at a size of 2.25 x 1.75", so quite small. It's part of a series of photos getting printed onto a single sheet. The printer asked me to provide them as a ready for print pdf which I was careful to create full-sized via a print to pdf program. Here is what I am getting from the printer (and after several attempts, they've all been like this):
IMG-3453.JPG


a) does the printer seem like it's printing at a very low dpi?
b) is there something I can change in my lightroom/pdf workflow to improve the end result?
c) is this just what an image looks like when printed this small? (I don't think so, I can pretty much count the individual ink dots)

Thanks for any help
 

jtk

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Bad shop. Don't sharpen all (that's probably been done by the shop's slave).Play with Clarity in LR or Structure in NIK (no sharpening).
 
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I think this might be caused by too much ink from your printer. What happens is if your ink setting isn't correct and too much ink is sprayed on the paper, it spreads. In the offset print world, it's called "dot gain". You might want to find the proper setting for your paper. Maybe other folks could give more insight on what's going on.
 
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