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Lesson Info

Making the Print

Okay, so I have the virtual copy ready. We're gonna jump into the print module. It was like jump into the print module. I I love to print out a light room. Um, and people ask me, like, you know, they're like, I don't use I'm not a light room user, but they print a lot. I tell him you should dump your stuff to print in the light room. Um, it's got a lot of great features and a lot of cool things, and we're gonna walk through. Ah, a set of them today, but printed out a light room is really robust. It's really flexible. It has some things in here that just make things a little bit easier that you don't have to worry about in your checklist. Going down, actually making pretty successful in photo shop. So one of the things we have in light room is we have a set of templates. So if I want to create heirs of four by six, there's pretty five by seven. I want to do for wide, and I'm actually going to drop in. Oh, keep looking. If I select photos, it automatically puts in the name is there. If I...

want to make contact sheet, where's condition? Four by five Contact sheet. Select a bunch images and in this case, has got the name of the image there so I could build a contact. She put a bunch of meat on their trim. Um, do whatever I need to do to do this and photo shop. I'd have to build a layout bringing photographs, range them past them whatever you're gonna do. But I can come down here and I'm like, Oh, actually, I've gotta access to all my collections, so actually want to do my HDR photographs. So an easy way to come in and make that now The other thing it's in here is if I get a layout I like I could build my own template. So if I get a layout structure, I want save my own template, come back in and I can print I've got there some things in here that I really like. I love maximum size. Give me the maximum size print possible, given my paper and image size constraints. A trip Tik. So a trip to give me three upon a page custom overlap. I can actually change in position these around and I can build whatever kind of late I want. So if you're doing like sports photography and you got the three classic poses of Little League or whatever, I mean, I got to play once, cause when you're batting average is zero. They only let's play once. But you could come in and build the layout to have that structure. You want to know that each time you came in, you have your photographs. You're like, Oh, I just want to put that photograph there, drag that photo after their I have my look. So again, we have this template ID way of actually approaching the printing process. Question. What is the difficulty level to build your own custom design? It's I don't think it's that difficult. Um, so if you're in the custom package, they've got a bunch of pull downs here for you to actually like. I hear I'm gonna clear the layout, and then I'm at a three by seven, an eight by 10 a 2.5 by five. And then I could literally just dragon position it. So if you're in the custom package the cell option here and then you can adjust if I want to change the height with. So it's literally drag and drop slider. Peace. Not really hard to build the custom package. Um, a couple of times I've had a custom package. Um, I would say five minutes to get the package of rough layup done, and then I kind of had foot with a little bit to get margins and stuff, but it's pretty easy. Um, me grab grab a different image here. Okay, So this layouts called fine art, Matt. So you see, it's kind of got awaited. Matt, look to it. But I want to make some change in there. Like I said, I can say about my template over here is assumed to fill. So what that basically does is it zooms to fill the picture self. So this darker edges here are for the cell that the image fits in. And right now I'm told that to hold the aspect ratio, so I have made a crop decision. I want the print to print with the crop aspect ratio. Zoom to fill, says is the size of the cell that the photograph can fit into is more important than the crops zoom in, so it's basically cropping the image. And if you look in here, I can actually move the image around a little bit. So for me, I never seem to fill. If I want that crop, I'll make that crop in the original image and then come back into print. Rotate image to fit is If the cell changes has a cell size change, it will rotate the photograph for the maximum size and then repeat one photo for pages. If you got multiple as that will repeat that photograph, you can also add a little border. So one of the things that's kind of nice if I add in there had a heavy stroke border. But if I make that like a light gray and then I backed off a little bit starts to almost look like I've got a little bit of a mat edge that's cut. So I'm like, Oh, I kind of like that little soft matt edge element within their the margins here about setting the margins for the paper left right top to bottom. You can customize the margin settings number of rows so I could add rows or columns in the layout, the guides information is showing me rulers. The non printable area is the gray area. Um, layout guides the actual Amy cell. So if I don't like that line, I could turn that off. The one thing that's important in here, from a personal standpoint, is dimensions could tell us. Ah, the actual size of the prints. If you need to print exact size for trim worker for something like that, you can come in and make sure you've really got six inches by nine inches. And then also you can see here that I've got 1273 PP I So this image right now is not set to be re sampled, and we're gonna talk about that in a second. So right now the same. We just got 1200 pixels per inch for printing, which is a lot, um, most of time are 303 60. So we'll talk about that re sampling in a second. But that dimensions will allow you to see that as well. You can specify a page color. You can add an identity plate, and you could see the identity plate on this case is right there. so identity plate actually floats out into the, um anywhere onto the printable area. So a watermark is contained to the image, but identity plate, I can put anywhere. So in this case, I've got a little mad and I could print my little lightweight logo there, and that would just kind of shows little in Boston on the on the image when it actually printed watermark the image. And if I've got watermarks created, they're gonna come in from my watermarks that I could use for export anywhere else. There a universal across all of those page options Do I want include page numbers. I often times print my final step to go to gallery with page numbers because I found it easier for them to walk to the gallery like I really like number three, just But you all will be like, Really, That's pretty cool, But no, no, I can also print page info. So if I'm actually doing on the page, Info tells me profile prayer that was printed on sharpening level that was applied out. Sharpen was applied. So if I'm doing proof printing, I mean these are prints that I'm testing with. I could print that just have that printed at the bottom of the page. And then when I came back later, I would know what it was printed on and printed with. Usually, I have to write you because I have to. I used to write that stuff on the back because I don't know. I always forget to do this, but it's nice to have when you're testing papers and then if crop marks. So if you're actually working with something where you need to actually do a cut for a crop, you can actually print the crop marks in there. So I recently did some printing for organization, and it was a sip 17 by 21 poster, and they needed it. Trimmed it exactly those lines. So I was able to print the crop marks and know that I could get a nice straight cut without futzing around with that photo info. I could put ah, bunch of different things under the photo. I could put the date with the file name, just some options in there for that. Now we're down to the actual guts part of this, the top part that's icing on the cake. The print job panel. This is the very bottom. This is the core guts of actually getting this out of light room and making sure we have the right thing. So I'm actually gonna go back to our real image now. So I'm back on my virtual copy of my image. Epson P 800 Hot press. Bright relative. That was my information that was on there. So draft mode printing basically says, nor the color management don't use a lot of ink and print it out really fast. Not really helpful if you're making fine prints because you could be like that. Looks terrible. OK, draft modes. Great. If you're in a hurry, though, I got a contact sheet and let me just need to see stuff cranking printed out. I'm not worried about correction. I'm little just looking at a bunch of things. That's what it's good for print resolution. So this image right now is set for 606 pixels per inch, so that Dimension Box had that if I checked print resolution, it goes right now, except for 20 so it's going to re sample this photograph to pixels per inch I could make that 300 I could make it any number I want. This is another area where people get. There's a lot of opinion on this and a lot of debate on this, and you could do a lot of testing on this. But let me give you some general information in a couple of general rules of thumb. If you're printing on a canon printer, the Canon printers nozzles. Size is 300 pixels per inch. That's what it's nozzle size wants to do. 1224 100 divided by three you get even pixel count Epson's or 3 67 20 1428 80 what you read for their pixel depth. When files are sent to the printer in that pipeline between light room adobe windows and Epson or Canon, the image will be re sampled into the preferred resolution of the printer. So if you send it to 40 somewhere in that pipeline, it's gonna up sample and re sample the 300 or 3 60 because that's what the printer is gonna take in printing. A couple of key things are gonna happen, and we have to know a couple of key things to make sure that we get the output we want. I mentioned output sharpening. We have sharpening it. The input level, the creative level and at the output level, output sharpening is image size and resolution dependent. So to get the right level of output sharpening, we need to know the size of the file. How big is the baby's gonna be? The DP I of the file And then we need to know if we're going to Matt Luster and then what kind of printer we're going to our case. We're going an inkjet printer, so we need to know matter. Luster paper. So if we don't check print resolution and give it a number of the printer expects the printer is going to go ahead and make that decision for me already. So if I send this at 606 p p. I to the printer in this case Yepsen, it'll take it to 3 or 7 20 If I check finest detail, that's what to find. His detail means in a absent print ballot box. It'll up sample the 7 20 so but if I tell it to go to it's gonna down sample to 300 but it was sharpened at 600. I want to be an absolute control of that as much as possible. So when I'm working with my files, I'm going into photo shop. I'm setting those resolutions for the printer I'm expected to go to. In this case, it's better oftentimes toe up sample than two down sample. So in this case, I've got The next sample up would be 7 20 I would go ahead and choose print resolution and to go to the episode, I would change it to 7 If it was a cannon, I would just go to 600 I let the six pixels just fall off because 606 06 That's close enough. If you're going to step down, you want to be uneven divisible, so you'll hear a lot of people say on an Epson printer, you could do 1 80 just fine because 1 80 is gonna double into 3 60 It's up 100% increase in the file, and it can do that resolution change relatively easily. You start getting the resolution lower than that. Now it's an odd math, and it's too big a leap for that to make. So to be in control of all of this, it helps to know what the resolution of the file is and try to be on that 300 divisible number, and it's better to go up and down. It's a little wonky like that. You can get online and you've spent a lifetime reading this and hearing arguments about this. But when you actually start doing the math and you start doing the checking and then this is where it gets going, like I'm not doing this because you just about to tell me you're looking at it under a magnifying glass. Yes, I'm looking at it under a magnifying glass, but like that edge detail enhancement. When you start printing, things get bigger, and all a sudden it's like, well, those air sharper, crisper lines than those lines. It matters now in a magazine. Small volume may not notice. Small little print might not notice, but consistent, reliable, repeatable. If I get in the habit of always doing it, I don't have to remember what I'm gonna print this one bigger so I actually should pay attention to my sharpening output numbers. I just do it every time. And this is why I love printing out a light room print resolution. So we're just going to say, for argument's sake that this was gonna print it 3 just to make the demo goal easier. I'm a 3 print sharpening If I'm in a photo shop and I'm gonna do my print sharp inappropriately, I would duplicate the file, sent my resolution to 3 60 Do the interrelation, do whatever I'm gonna dio and then I'm going to apply my output sharpening methodology in that file at that resolution for the paper size. If I change paper size is I'm gonna have to redo the sharpening on that file because sharpening remember, size and resolution dependent changes size the paper. Gotta change the sharpening. Here's the amount of work I have to do for output sharpening in light room. There's a print sharpening check box here standard lower high 90% of the time to standard lo a lot of great Asian, no real texture. Smooth gradations choose low. A lot of really fine detail choose high, but most cases photos have a blend of both that you standard and then the other really hard question. Do I have glossy paper, Matt Paper? If it's not actually Matt paper, it's glossy luster paper, semi luster. Any of that. That's just glossy paper. Did I have to think about what? Setting for a sharp mass? Did I have to think? Do I run smart? Sharp in here? Did I build on edge, Master? I need to invert that. Do I need to blend a contour? Look new Now I'm on 8.5 by 11 paper. I'm gonna come to page set up, and now I'm gonna go and choose. Let's choose 11 by 17. Okay, we'll come back up. Let's make our image print nice and big. Let's I rotate to fit. Oh, nice big photo. So now my resolution on that is at 2 30 up. Sample it to three sixties the printers. Happy print sharpening. I think all the standard met. All right. Very math. I don't think about it. And here's why Lightner Marty knows the size of the photo. It knows the resolution. It's gonna process the size of the photo up, sample it, apply the appropriate level sharpening in the center of the printer. Everything happens in the right order. The printer is gonna get a 360 dp. I file and go 3 60 love 3 60 I'm not doing a thing to this printed. Nobody had to do anything. Light room to care of all of that for me. Yeah, English Major. No math. Okay, 16 bit output will produce smoother transitions and gradations. If you actually have a printer that's capable of 16 bit output, most most modern printers are subletting. Just check that box again. You'll print both, and then you'll email me and argue that you can't see a difference. And then at some point you'll get an image where you will be able to see a difference. It's just we're chicken. That's not gonna cost you anything in the print job, and you'll get a smidge. More information that goes to the printer. Color management is where we specify what needs to happen in terms of the I. C. C. Profile. Now, early on, remember, I made the decision to print on hot press. Bright paper, so managed by printer means that the color this file gets sent to the printer and the printer gets decide how to understand it, translate the color. You would choose that if you don't have a paper profile, somebody hand you a box of paper with no label on it. Printer manages color. I don't know what it is. The printer is gonna do the best it can to produce the colors. And a lot of times it does a great job super great job producing the color. But in this case, I've soft proved to a very specific profile. So I'm gonna choose hot press bright and perceptual or relative. This one's for relative, and then I'm gonna print. That's it. Now I've got this print adjustment down here. I checked that on. I've got options to adjust brightness and contrast. These sliders were put here because people would print and say, my prints too dark. How do I fix it? Check on this And let's move the brightness later. Who noticed Nothing happens. You'll hear people say, I just said it to like plus 10 and I'll be happy. I can't see it on the screen. Adjusting contrast Printer to dark and their two flat. That's the two complaints people have. If the print comes out to Tark. Your monitor is too bright. That's it. There's nothing else to check your monitors to break. Now you're gonna tell me. Well, wait a minute. I like to watch you two videos with my monitor. Really bright. Great. And when you goto print your photographs, calibrate your monitor, get the brightness level set right when you calibrate most people that somewhere between 80 and 100 lumens inside the little machine that's gonna do your calibration, the color monkey, the data, a spider, whatever you're gonna use is gonna ask you. How right do you want the screen to be? It's going to say, like 1 in rare cases. Is that true? It's 1 20 for some people, 100 further people without knowing your environment. Most of the time, it's between 80 and 100. You set that and then it'll help you adjust your monitor to an uncomfortably dark level for about three or four minutes, and then your eyes will adjust and everything will be fine every time I go to print. Do that calibration to make sure the monitor celebrate level the print adjustment, the reason I have issues with it and I love the fact that it will be put it in there to help the average printer. My prince two dark quickly make that adjustment. But if I come back the next time, I don't have the consistency of my workflow. If my prints too dark and my monitors correct, I'd rather go edit the original file, make it brighter and get the print correct. Goes back to the consistency of the workflow, that sliders arbitrary enough in my workflow, an arbitrary enough of the people I print wis workflow that I don't want them to use that I want them to fix the file, fix the calibration so that we get the print right. So absolutely, you click on that at 10 points of rightness. You probably have better prints and because you're already editing too dark. So that's the little little piece for that question. If you are getting this already to print, but you're perhaps are sending it out to be printed, would you be using that concept of the that you don't know the paper and what not great questions. So right now we're set the printer printer. I can also print to J pic file. So people ask, What's the difference between printing to print to Jay Pek file and exporting to J pic? The easiest way to explain why you would have the difference between those is one. If I wanted to put in this identity, overlay onto the mat and have that print or if I want to create a picture package contact sheet, keep stacking things. I want to print that contact sheet. Export that contact sheet, go to expert module. Good luck. So the print file here is if I want to have the settings that are available in the J pick So that's the difference now printing to third party. So this is if I've got control the printer and house Pretty. The third party is pretty easy, actually, because most third party printers, when you read their instructions, they will tell you. Please exported J peg of the minimum file size with s RGB or adobe RGB is the color space Okay, don't send them pro photo. Don't send them a tiff file. Don't send them something else. Weird. Don't send them some icy sea Don't text. Don't print with the hot press bright I c c Profile their printers. Believe me, they know exactly what the photos conduce. They know exactly what colors they can get. They print millions of photos. So if Bay Photo in picks image was no matter where you go Costco says we want s RGB you print to file. If you want all these customize settings, it s RGB. That's it. Now, some places, some high end printing places will tell you we're gonna be printing on steps in 7 900 print on a canon 8300. With this paper profile, you can download that I C C profile and then you can soft proof knowing that you're going to give them the file. And then you could have offset the soft proofing and sent from the J pic file s RGB with some of those edits in there. Or they'll tell you you can embed our profile in there. But the third party will always tell you what to do and where people get bit, don't follow directions. So and usually if you send an s rgb file, you're fine. All those printers can produce the S RGB color space about I remember how many years ago Now we're getting far enough along that I can't remember the number of years we got to where most of the prints were producing at or just exceeding the adobe RGB color space. Um, and then it depends if they're doing ah light jet print, which is the old chroma Jinich, chemically processed print but using digital technology or if they're doing ink jet prints will vary that, but you follow the directions of the third party piece. Um, the other part that's great about that is if you follow their directions and the print comes back to dark, Monitor was too bright. Same problem adjuster. Monitor. Send it again and you'll actually get that. And most of the printing place is a really good about working with photographers. And so they'll have. Like these are general guidelines. These are the general problems we see. Um, every time I've sent something out, with the exception of when it's literally been my problem, my fault I did something wrong 99 times out of 100 looks fine. I drop ship stuff to clients. They get it, they see me pictures. When it goes on the wall looks fine, and that's whether it's printed on metal. Otherwise, um, yeah, some of the stuff I have printed on acrylic or something like that, so I just I don't have the capability to do that. So I've sampled enough to know that I trust the company, and as long as I send them what they asked for, everything will work out OK in terms of black and white printing. That's the one place where I do something a little bit different. Um, if I've tinted the black and white printer printer photograph that's been tinted, then I used the I. C C. Profile. If it's a kind of traditional black and white with no color added to it, I let the printer manage color, and the reason I do that is if I go into printer manages color, and I'm gonna come into the printer dialog box at this point. So we're looking at the EPS in P 800 and if I goto printer settings, I can actually now change this. So there's a print mode of color, and there's the print motive. Advanced black and white change printers hero fast into a cannon canon under quality and media. There's black and white photo and then another color options. I've now got the option to edit for a black and white. So Canon and Epson both have a similar piece of technology and there, and what they've done is they've gone in and realize that black and white photographs with their printed with all the coloring we see a color cast in their Kasai in magenta blues, are all being used to create those graze. But when we print with the advanced black and white setting, so now we're looking at a black and white footage of It's gonna dominantly use the greys in the in the black inks of the printer. It might use a tiny bit. Justo pulled some of the shading, but we're getting the dominant use of the great inks and the predator. Create the black and white, and it changes the way it talks to the printer to produce those tones. And so you end up with I think I'm much richer black and white image, because that I C. C profile defines a black point that it think that the paper is capable of. Well, the printer can see I can produce more black than that. So if you're doing a black and white A maid Let it produces much black as possible, so it actually helps you get a little bit stronger contrast. Now it takes a little bit of trial on air because you're losing your soft proofing. But in general, you get on the screen and you go to print. It'll be you'll be close enough. But I do recommend if you're gonna do just traditional kind of basic black and white prints without 10 teen or anything like that to do this, this piece and methodology Okay, Jay Pek filed export. If you have that selected, then you have the option down here to print to file, and it's just gonna bring up a save dialog box. Like I said, the reason you would choose J Peg here instead of export is you want the layout options in the print dialog box