Best way to prepare images for commercial printing using Lightroom

October 3, 2016 1:19 PM

I have been an avid photography hobbyist for about 8 years now. I use Lightroom for processing and management, and I love it. Thus far, I have only displayed my pictures on screens. I'm looking to print some for decorating my home and to assemble a physical portfolio. What's the best Lightroom method for preparing images for print?

I'm struggling with two options.

First: In the DEVELOP module, sizing the picture there via crop/resize, and exporting a jpg that I send to the lab.

Second: In the PRINT module, having already cropped in DEVELOP, selecting an output size and exporting a jpg from there.

Given that I'd like to have about 1/4" of white border on the prints, it seems like the second option is better. But the output templates all seem to be based on 8.5/11 paper, and I am not sure that's how commercial labs do things.

Would love to hear tips from those who have moved from digital to print. Thanks!

posted by bluejayway to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (4 answers total)

If you want quality photos, do not send them a jpg. TIFF is more or less standard for quality photo printing.

If you're starting to get into printing, I highly recommend spending some money on a color accurate monitor and calibration system. Asus and Dell have some fairly decent monitors with 99.9% RGB coverage in the $300-400 range and the basic version of the Colormunki is around $120-200 IIRC. Actually seeing the colors as they'll appear is important to getting great prints.

You might also read The Digital Print: Preparing Images in Lightroom and Photoshop for Printing by Jeff Schewe, as there's far more content there on how to get great prints than we can possibly cover here.
posted by Candleman at 1:52 PM on October 3, 2016

I don't have much knowledge here, but I try to balance hassle and complexity with decent results. I try to send small photos at 300 dpi or above. Bay Photo recommends as little as 50 dpi for decent prints. I would do any white borders with matting or framing, just because I would imagine photo labs might think you're making a mistake if your photos have a plain white border. I suppose you could do something with print marks, but this seems like more trouble than it's worth for prints that aren't being used in a production/publishing process. Framing is going to overlap your photo some, but in most cases, you don't want important details extending to the edge of the frame anyway. Some photo printers/labs will send you free sample photos or free prints that you can use to manually calibrate your monitor. You can also buy or rent a calibration device.

I personally don't like Wide Gamut (Adobe RGB) monitors, because in color managed apps your photo looks one way, and in non-color managed apps, they look completely different. It adds a confusing layer of complexity that's never been worthwhile for me as an amateur. A good sRGB monitor is fine (for my non-professional use), and my photos look the same in every app.

As far as Lightroom goes, I export my images after using Develop. I've never touched the Print module, as I always assumed that was for printing images yourself, which I don't do.
posted by cnc at 1:59 PM on October 3, 2016

I'm in photography school and the instructions for exporting from Lightroom for printing via Photoshop that we're given are:

- Get the image to look the way you want it in Lightroom
- Make sure you sharpen the image, usually to around 50%
- Use File->Export to bring up the Export Dialog
- In File Settings, pick
-- Image Format: TIFF
-- Color Space: AdobeRPG(1998)
-- Compression: None
-- Bit Depth: 16 Bits
- In Image Sizing
-- Resize to the size of the print you want
-- Set Resolution to 350 ppi
- Click Export
posted by octothorpe at 2:25 PM on October 3, 2016 [4 favorites]

Random tip that you may or may not know. In the develop module when you're in crop mode, you can hit the letter 'O' key to change the crop guides. One of them is a guide for sizing photos for printing in different aspect ratios. If you hit shift-O, you can change the orientation of the guides.
posted by fremen at 10:37 PM on October 3, 2016