Printing Out of Lightroom

[Remo Nonaz]

Is there a tutorial that explains the Lr4 printer workflow clearly? I've watched the LuLa videos and Julianne Kost's videos, but still, I start print jobs before I'm ready, print images the wrong way, get paper settings wrong and am generally confused by the work flow for printing out of Lr . I do not have these issues in CS4. I'd prefer to not export to CS4 each time I print as it adds a lot of steps and creates unnecessary psd files but I can't seem to print reliably out of Lr.

Are other having issues with this or is it just me?   

[mbaginy]

I have a love-hate relationship with printing from LR.  Workflow is simple and logical but margins, cell spacing and cell size aren't always shown on the monitor or printed as the dimensions I've entered.  I've found it necessary to set as many dimensions as possible to zero before beginning to enter my requirements.  Sometimes, when the depicted layout doesn't match my entries, I move some sliders back & forth, then re-enter the values and suddenly all looks fine.

Some months ago I was printing three images in one row with a certain margin and spacing.  The matting of the frame was styled for three images in that layout.  Although the dimensions I entered into the layout panel were exactly as I needed, the layout shown on the monitor were wrong.  Margins needed to be larger than spacings but the monitor showed the opposite!  Also, the picture sizes didn't print as the dimensional readout.  Only after moving all sliders to zero and starting over, did the third!! print reflect what I wanted.

My suggestion: "zero" all dimensions, then enter your layout.  It would be nice to see some sort of "reset" button.  Guess I could create a preset with values set to zero.

[Jim Pascoe]

Most people seem to print a lot of their pictures in a certain range of sizes.  My advice is to make templates for each of your print-size/paper-size combinations - for example a 9x6" print onto A4 paper.  Once you have these templates set up printing is a breeze!  No need to check all the settings each time you go to print.  I have dozens of templates for different size prints and paper combinations and it really is worthwhile.

Jim

[John Caldwell]

As Jim says. Printing Templates have been the most useful to me - probably mores in the Print module than in any other LR module, templates really prevent the need to reinvent each time you print.

Can you give an example of an instance in which the print layout was unexpected? Perhaps there is a simple explanation.

John Caldwell

[Remo Nonaz]

The suggestion of setting up templates is a good one.

I think my main problem is with the page setup features. I figured out that going to page setup in the edit tab allows you to set the paper type, size, contols, etc. but it does not seem sticky. Sometimes it works, other times it seems that the settings don't get set. Then, if you don't use page setup, when you select print out of the right side panel, the page setup box comes up and you can enter the needed information. However, if you then select print from that pop up screen, your print starts printing, but you won't have set you page scaling yet, because that is up in the top section of the main panel but won't show the correct page size until you set the page settings in the pop up. If you don't select print, your selected settings don't seem to stick. It seems confusing between what get done in the Lr panel and what gets done in the printer setup boxes. In CS4 it's all done in the printer popup boxes and it is very clear what is getting done. Of course you can't add a border or do the other things that Lr will, but you will get your print right.

My angst Saturday, which caused me to fire off a negatively toned post, was this. I went to page setup and setup a quarter-sheet proof. This selected the paper type, size, printing mode and printer/ICC control. This was the setup box, not the print page box. I then slected enter and expected to go and setup the rest of my settings in the Lr panel. But no, it started printing a page, printing the wrong way with the wrong ICCs and the wrong scaling. (Which I had not set yet.) In hind sight, it is probable that I selected 'print page' instead of 'page setup' though I've leaned to be carefull about this. They are right above one another in the pull down list. I'm not really sure, but each time I go through this I seem to find a different way to do the same thing and therefore never seem to set up a reliable workflow.

I'll work on the templates.