Annoyed at Lightroom printing

[hjulenissen]

<rant>
Why is it that when I go into certain menus in the printing module, Lightroom suddenly decides (without any relevant input from me) that the format should be A4, even though I have selected 10x15? I have wasted countless amount of ink/paper/time not catching this bug before pressing "print".

Why cant there be a single button that will use the selected paper, selected image, print to fill the paper (but not distort dimensions) at optimal quality. Isnt this what 90% of the users do most of the time? I don't care about dpi, I have lots of megapixels in the camera, and an A4 max printer.

If Lightroom offered softproofing, I would be a lot less hesistant to get a proper printer and proper profiles for it.

In line with the parametric approach of Lightroom, would it not make sense to keep track of both screen edits and print edits as one logical unit? I will typically turn knobs and push sliders until an image looks good to me on screen, then print, disappointment follows, and I will iterate N times printing/tweaking using display until I get a print that makes me happy, then delete all changes made for the print... If Lightroom in some magical way understood what changes was specifically for print, it could keep those separately, available at any time, and I could even have a look "across" all images to see if there was a pattern in how I tweaked good looking monitor images into good looking printer images.


Oh, and why did HP decide that my printer/scanner needed 120MB _drivers_ that needs security updates seemingly once a week, that force me to go down on my knees to click "accept" 2-3 times to navigate its no-good UI for no good reason, that lock up my Core2 PC for 30 seconds if I ever accidentally click any of the crappy applications that came with the drivers? My old HP 610 had a perfect user interface: none. I'll gladly pay $100 extra to _not_ have a built-in display, memory-card reader and "helpful" windows pop-ups in my next printer
</rant>

Ahhh. Feeling much better now.

-h

[pflower]

As regards the first two paragraphs - there already exist templates which will handle everything from paper size, rear, sheet feeder or front loading, image size and all the necessary driver settings.  Not sure which menus you are going into but I have set up templates for each size of image, type of paper etc. etc.  I just select the right template and press print one - don't even need to go to the printer drivers at all.  Works seamlessly for me.  All you have to remember is to chose the right template to begin with.

[Mac Mahon]

10 X 15 cm?  Are you printing on A4 paper or 4"X6" paper?

Try setting your page size to A4 or 4X6 (bottom left dialogue) depending on the answer above.

Uncheck "Zoom to Fill"

Set "Cell size" to 10cm X 15 cm (= 4"X6")

And save this as a 'Print Template'  (Under  Print/New Template from top menu bar)

One click thereafter gives you the same settings. 

Works for me!


Tim

[Hans Kruse]

10 X 15 cm?  Are you printing on A4 paper or 4"X6" paper?

Try setting your page size to A4 or 4X6 (bottom left dialogue) depending on the answer above.

Uncheck "Zoom to Fill"

Set "Cell size" to 10cm X 15 cm (= 4"X6")

And save this as a 'Print Template'  (Under  Print/New Template from top menu bar)

One click thereafter gives you the same settings. 

Works for me!


Tim

Yes and in addition remember to set the printer driver parameters before saving the template or update the template if changes has been made to either the Lightroom settings or the printer driver settings. The nice thing about the template concept is that also the printer driver settings are saved with the template so that no matter what settings you have active, all settings will be set correctly for the given print if the settings were correct when the template were last updated.