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Printing in Lightroom

Lesson 38 from: Post-Processing for Outdoor and Travel Photographers

Ben Willmore

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Lesson Info

38. Printing in Lightroom

Lesson Info

Printing in Lightroom

when I go to the top of my screen and I have the different modules remember you could turn off various modules and you can do that by right clicking to choose which modules show up there is a module for printing if you have it hidden you could just type command p for print like you would from any program and that would cause it to show up and bring you into it in the print module this is where we can set up our printer and good everything looking the way we'd like but what's really nice about the print module is we can create templates so that if we're going to have to make a particular type of prince if we have a certain size of paper we like to use and I like my image to fill the paper a certain amount I only need to set it up once and then with almost a single click I could get any other picture to have that same look so let me give you a little bit of an overview of what's here first in the lower left we have page set up in print settings these are the two dialog boxes that you wou...

ld usually see in other programs if I was in microsoft word or if I was in just picked any other program if I hit page set up this is where I khun format this for the kind of printer I use using an absent are three thousand and so I'll choose that and then here I can choose the um sheet of paper that I want to use so I'm gonna go over here and tell it to retain size the biggest aiken prentiss thirteen by nineteen I have a little printed these days remember I usually live in a bus and we only have so much space but a thirteen by nineteen sheet do it borderless and retain the size so here I told what print are going to use I told you what size paper I'm going to use click okay then there's prints settings which is to the right of that in windows I believe there's only one button here because both of those settings were incorporated into a single dialogue box same general ideas just in one dialogue blocks instead it too I hear prince settings this comes up and this is controlled by my printer so it's this will be different on different operating systems in different for different printers as faras what features are available but the main thing I want to do is go in here to to printer settings and this is where I set up what type of paper imprinting on is it a glossy paper isn't a dull paper what we have and in here I'm going to end up I usually switch between premium photo luster for what I'm just doing simple tests in printing and then when I'm absolutely done and I want to be the highest quality I use that kind of paper called exhibition fiber from absent those are the two things I mainly print on then you can control how much detail you want in it and the main thing is a cz lungs were up at fourteen forty we should be pretty good high speed I can turn off if I wanted to only print in one direction is it goes across that's have a thing but it will very depending on the printer you use I love how it thinks it knows I have lowing my printer is in florida how does it you know but the main thing and hears I'm choosing what kind of paper I'm using the printer knows let's see here and there are other settings in here some of them are dictated by printers someone for them or not but make sure you do that when I click save you notice it save it's not donna everything that's because we're going to be saving that into a template over on the right side it's a lot of controls that I have in each one of these little guys khun b collapsed down so we don't have to see all the settings but if you look weaken do either a single image or contacts he she kind of set up picture package would mean I want like three five by sevens too ate by dens and all that kind of stuff kind of gained onto a sheet of paper where I can set up my custom layout however I'd like if you go through here and take a look most of these are self explanatory but some of them you might want to know about we're gonna end up setting up margins that control how much white space we have on the paper and it wants to know after we do that should it scale my pictures so it fits or fills that area because if it's in a different aspect ratio than my picture like vita square image for instance and I tell it to phil then it's going to crop off some of my image in order to scale it up big enough to fit a non square sheet of paper so usually I have it so it's not going to necessarily seemed to fit rotate to fit is if you are mainly going to be laying out multiple images on a sheet and you might want some of them to be rotated so that they fit more appropriately if you have a combination of landscape portrait sizes this is where you can add a border around your photograph if you'd like to uh you can see it in the preview I mainly use a border if my photograph has something really close to solid white near the edge then I might have a really thin border around it so you can tell where the photo ends where their paper begins otherwise I'd rather not put any detail near the edge of my picture it's just something to draw your eye away from the subject of your photo in my opinion and lay out here's where you can set up your margins I can come in here and say to keep a certain amount of space from the left side right side top and bottom I can also set up a grid if I would like to have multiple images right now I think I only have one image selected if I had multiple I could have this create a grid that it's more like a contact sheet where there be one picture in each side each one of these when you do a grid you have something called self spacing which is simply the amount of space in between each one should the images actually bump into each other assured there be some space if instead of just defining it based on margins and how much space there is between those cells you could define the exact size because maybe you need to make a picture no larger than four inches wide or something like that so you could do that but that's not too exciting like I said a lot of those settings are self explanatory so let's skip over anything that's overly self explanatory and look at the stuff it's not so ah let's see here ah here you could add some text to your image either an identity plate where you might put your name over the image or this is where you could also have other identity plates that have a logo in the middle of copyright symbol or something else if you wanted to put it there and you have control over various how that shows up here you could do your water marking remember when we had those watermark templates and we made one well here's that best of ben badge and now it's kind of hard to seeks its so small but it is in the corner if I happen to want to use that I can use it ah in many different areas of light room but this is one of them you can have it include things like photo info if you print more than one image on a page he might want have the file names underneath or something else and this is where you could do that but then down here is the real meat of what's happening when you're printing you have the choice of printing to either your printer or j peg file if you're going to use an outside service to print this he just needed to set up what size borders you had around it or gang up more than one picture but you don't have the printer on your desk instead you've gotta send it off to somebody else you could choose j peg file here and then instead of printing it you would end up saving j peg and therefore you can send that to somebody else but here we're talking about printing so we'll leave it there here you have a choice for print resolution usually you can just leave that turned off this is if you wanted to force it to print out a certain resolution otherwise light room will figure it out for you based on the other settings that you have in here and this is only if you want to force it to a particular setting down here we can sharpen the image in the main thing I need to tell it is are we on matt paper glossy this is a different amount of sharpening needed for each and so the type of paper I chose was a glossy one some printers can handle sixteen bit output which just means instead of sending two hundred fifty brightness levels to the printer send thousands of brightness levels if it can handle it if you have any really big panorama is that have really smooth sky going across a very long area you might find that this setting would cause that sky to look a little smoother but it depends on some images he'd never notice it will slow down printing so test it below that you have color management and this is where you choose the profile for your printer each kind of paper and ink a combination you have should have a different profile available usually you can get them from the printer manufacturer and I mainly print I'm pretty luster from this machine so that's what's here if you don't find your profile listed if you choose other you'll find the others that are list that are installed in your computer and you could turn on the check boxes that air here where if you don't see one here you could downloaded off the internet and put it in the location that is listed here library printers you know and you could turn it on but I'm going to choose the one for premium lester paper that's what I'd like to print on the printing intent you can use either one of these settings for perceptual is what I usually end up using down here at the bottom there is a choice called print adjustment if you find the profile you have for your printer it's not as accurate as it could be meaning that when you print what you see off your printer looks darker than we see on your screen which happens for some people it would be nice if he didn't have to adjust the picture itself because if you adjust the picture itself then when you export it to go to facebook or you use it for a slide show on screen it's going to look like it's adjusted for this printer and I'd rather not do that so here we have print adjustment and we could come up here and increase the brightness of my image and printed again see if it looks close to my screen it's not increased brightness some or printed again it won't change the look your picture here it will only change the look of the print but this is not the most elegant way of dealing with that the most elegant way is to get a better profile for that printer if yours is not giving you a result where your screen looks similar to your printer you should talk to a color management person they can come in and calibrate your screen create a profile for it and create a custom profile for your printer and if so the two will be very close to matching if you don't have the resources to do that then you got these two little sliders you could use then once I get all of this set up if I actually wanted to make a print right now I could hit the print button and it would just print the button on the right would bring up the print dialog box if you're used to seeing this one well you don't have to see that just hit print and you did you print out without that dialogue was showing up once I have this set up on the left side we have the template browser here click the little plus sign and given a name called this thirteen by nineteen with I don't remember what my border is there but with twenty five inch border and then if you end up hitting create if you ever want to get back to this set up again all you need to dio is go to the print module goto the template browser and click on the particular template you want maybe you have one for four up photos they so created once and then save it as a template light room comes with some templates and if you open that area and just mouse over them you'll get a preview up above of what kind of stuff is contained within those templates then one final thing is if you know that this precise image needs to be printed this way in the future at the very top right of the image there's a button called create saved print create safe print and that means if I click it I could give this name and I can place it inside any of my I have way too many of them but any of my collections you know the collections that are in the main party your library well let's see if I can use them we've been using today take me a minute to find excite his collection so much it gets below this the ones have been using today day two let's go today three ok I'll put it in day three miscellaneous alright and I can include this particular photo I can also make it make a virtual copy the reason that would be a very good thing was then if I ever adjust the original picture it won't mess this one up so hit create and now if I go back to the library by typing g and I look remember where I put it there should be one in here it usually looks like a little printer I'm not seeing it right now the other this it just took a second for toby created do you see that little printer icon and it says the name there if I ever need to print this specific image again all I need to do is go to the library module click on that and I'll have the image sitting there and if I go to the print module I'd be able to print it out or I could just type command p that's everything but it's coming nice and elegant the way that printing works in light room if you work with templates and you can save the settings for your prince so anyway we're running out of time so why don't we wrap her up way whole day and hopefully you guys learned how to make your images look dramatically better using light room and photo shop and that if you spend the time you can also find just about any image on a map or just by typing in a few words

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Handbook
Bonus Packet
Post Processing Practice Files

Ratings and Reviews

Photoracer
 

After catching parts of each of the three days, I knew that I would need to have access to this wealth of information. What is great about the program is the ability to stop and go back over something that is not fully understood...and be able to do that until confident enough to move on. I saw no "fluff" in the course, just great information imparted with a style that is makes it easy to understand. CreativeLive scored a big hit with this course! The bonus material is SO valuable, especially the presets. That saves an enormous amount of time for me. My appreciation of the power behind the software is becoming ever clearer. Thanks, Ben, for another outstanding presentation!

Shannon Beelman Photography
 

Ben has been amazing! He is a wealth of information on organizing images as well as great tips to make your travel images pop just a little more. I came into this class feeling like I had a good handle on lightroom and have come out with a better understanding of the power of the software to make artistic life easier. He covers tips, tricks and little known options that help make workflow smother. I have sat here watching as much of the free broadcast as I can and in this last week I have gotten control over years of images in my lightroom. This is one I know I will be buying soon.

johninblackhawk
 

Great class! Somehow, it was enjoyable not having Ben default to "curves for everything"! I don't think the title for this course did it justice, tho. This class was 90% Light Room and 10% Photoshop. I was very happy to discover that dynamic and equally as happy to purchase this course! If you are new to Light Room, this class is a MUST. Creative Live offers several LR classes but this is the one to own. Ben is working on his new book about Light Room Mastery - can't wait! In the meanwhile, I'll be watching Ben's thorough approach to LR in this video. So, don't let the title throw you a curve ball, if you are new to Light Room or a seasoned user, there's plenty of great information - delivered as only Ben can! Thanks CL for this great class!

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