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Exporting for Print

The next scenario I want to get into is also exporting J pegs but exporting to send out to print. So there are two scenarios there. There's just all these. This tree just keeps getting more and more branches to it. There's lots of branches, but when you're exporting files to print their two kinds of printing services or two different basic kinds of sets of requirements some printing services, I believe this is how Shutterfly, for example, works. You can upload the full size file. And on the Shutterfly website you would specify what sizes you want, you know, five by seven and 28 by tens and using their software online. You would specify how you want to crop the photo to fit those proportions so you don't have to do the cropping work or the sizing work up front. You just need to export a full sized JPEG that you can upload upload online. There are other printing services that want you to send exactly what you want out of the process, so a professional level printing service, for example,...

if you want to 16 by 20 your photo has to be cropped to that shape to those proportions ahead of time and you have to send them exactly a 16 by 20 photo at 300 pixels per inch. So we're going to start out with that scenario to deal with the cropping, and then I'll get back to talking about both scenarios once we get into the export dialog. But if you're working with a printing service that expects you to send the cropped photo, you need to do the crop in the develop module. So I'm gonna go to this other folder. Photos here doesn't really matter where we are. And let's say that this photo I want a 16 by 20 print of this photo. So I'm gonna go to the develop module. I could type D for, develop and then and then go into the crop tool. But the shortcut are jumps you straight into the crop tool. Now, an aside on that, if you use pick and reject flags, as I discussed on Thursday, you know P for pick. It's supposed to be X for reject, but if you type are for reject and you wonder what happened, you in fact went into the crop tool in the develop module. So I'm in the crop tool in the develop module. I'm gonna specify in the tops in the crop options here that I want 60 by 20 proportions, which are the same as for by 58 by 10. So this is about the shape of the photo, not about the size of the photo, and then I'll click and drag to do the best I can. Given I need that size, I'll say done or I'll click back on the crop tool to put away. And now I'm ready to export this to send off to my to my printer so I can go back to the library module to export this photo to click on that export button. But what else can I do? Right? Click So I can right click and I can say export. Now I don't want to say export with previous. That would be the last J Peg settings. I just use the little small J pick that could be very handy when its applicability. But I want to say export, dot, dot, dot so that I can get into this dialogue and now set it up for, um, for sending out this this large photo for print. I'll put this on my desktop again. I'll put it in a sub folder for print and again, whether you re name or not, just depend. It's just a matter of preference. I'm not going to rename in this case, and I'll scroll down to the file settings now all printing services except J. Pecs. Some printing services pro level printing services also accept ifs. So a tiff file, um, does not have any lossy compression applied its larger in terms of megabytes, but it is of the utmost quality. So if you're working with a pro level printing service and you want the absolute best results, I would choose Tiff. If you're printing services service, just you had just allows J pigs. That's fine, too. So don't feel like you're automatically gonna have a bad quality. Print isn't results, but with printing, I wouldn't choose a quality down. At 60 I would choose a quality in the 90 to 100 range. It will be a larger file, but you won't have to email that out. You'll be uploading that online. Another option that I really like that came along in light Room three. Was this limit file size box. So if you're printing service online says you can upload files up to five megabytes and no larger, then you can actually just set this to 5000 K to get the highest quality file that meets their requirement handy feature. And then on color space with a printing service, I would say Follow the instructions that you're printing service gives you consumer level will be SRG be a lot of pro level will accept Adobe RGB as well. So if I have a choice, I would choose that. And then under image sizing for the scenario, the pro level printer that says send me a 16 by 20 at 300 pixels per inch, send me exactly what you want. For that scenario. I would choose inches here, and I would choose 20 inches by 16 inches at 300 because that's what they've told me the resolution should be, and I would go with that. Now, if you're working with um, Shutterfly, another service that allows you to resize online, you can choose to not resize to fit. If that makes your files to big toe upload, then you could maybe cut your file size down a little bit, but you don't have to specify, um, you don't have to be as specific as you do with a pro level printer. I have put sharpening here again. This is on top of capture sharpening. So the question is, what should you do? Well, you have mad paper and glossy paper here now, with a pro level printing service. If you want sharpening, they expect you know what sharpening is and you've done it. So I would I would definitely do that here, So glossy would be any kind of coated paper. And I would I would do some export tests at these these different levels if you're working with a consumer level printing service and you're not sure if they're sharpening because sometimes they sharpened because most consumers have no idea what sharpening is. Photos look better sharpened, so they sharpen automatically, or you have to turn off the preference not to sharpen. If you're not sure and you can't get a hold of them or get information, you might want to not do additional sharpening here. Be conservative, you know, rather than end up with a photo that's been sharpened too many times again. You can strip here metadata if you, you know, if you choose to Really, when you're sending to print copyright contact information's sufficient metadata. And in this scenario, I don't think I'd want a watermark. Might my 16 by 20 print um that would go on the wall I like in this post processing after export to, say, Show and Finder or Windows Explorer just pops that window open when the export that is done. I know it's done that way, and I could drag the files off to wherever I need to drag them to. So once again, if these air settings or even close to settings that you want to be able to use again, you're gonna save them as a preset. So I would call this my, um, my printing precept, and I might get put the company name in here if I've set settings that are specific to the company that I use, Click create and then let's go ahead and click on Export. Okay, this one I actually see it's taking a little bit longer. I was working with a bigger file, and it's creating a larger J peg. And if I open this up. I'll see that. I have what looks like a small photo, but I'm not zoomed in all the way. This is actually a very, very large photo. Now let's take a look at that. It took me a long time to set up all the settings. Took me a long time to talk through that. But let's take a look at what now? Once you have presets, created how quick these things really are. So this third photo here, I want Teoh send out email so that using email functionality but just exporting a J peg Copy Teoh put online or to send off to somebody I'm gonna right click on it. Say export dot, dot dot I'm gonna click on my email preset on the left hand side here, glanced down through the settings to make sure that there isn't something different about this particular you know, set of requirements that I have today. And then I'm gonna hit export. And of course, I've done this before, so I'm gonna override it, and even quicker I can right click export and my user presets are right here at the bottom, so I don't even have to go back into the dialogue. If I just want to use the settings as they are okay over it again, questions on that process or exporting J pegs to share with people. I'm gonna go into a few more options in the export dialog in terms of exporting to DVD and, um, adobe revenue as well. We have a question from Kalen. Is it possible to export the whole catalog and keep the folder structure? Well, that's that. Um no. Okay, it was that simple. I mean, you can export the catalog with the files, you know, but that's different than just exporting files themselves. Question from a tbsp cska What is the difference between printing to J. Peg and exporting? So exporting? You're just saying you're exporting what you see here in the develop module, which is just the photo in the print module, you have the option to print to a printer or printed J pig. But in the print module, you have photo on a white background or in a layout of a collage or other things. So it gives you mawr designed functionality than just exporting a straight photo. Okay. And Kathy Skull has a question about re sizing If light room has something similar to buy by cubic smooth, inner, smoother and by cubic shopper sharper when you are re sizing what happens to the pixels? Are you losing sharpness when you re size? So any time you re so if you any time you make something smaller you're throwing away pixels, Right? So this photo started out as a 23 100 by 3500 pixel photo and I reduce it down to 800 by 600. So leg room has to decide what information in here gets thrown away. And it does it in such of course, a good way that that we never realized that there is missing information. We just have a smaller version. It uses an interpolation process. Now Photoshopped, you specify what interpolation process you want to use by cubic smoother by Hubert Sharper as faras light room goes, I don't know exactly what it uses. I'm assuming that it would use by cubic sharper, um that it would use the optimal one of those two based on whether you're upsizing or downsizing. But I don't know exactly, but I wouldn't be concerned when you're downsizing at all now when you're upsizing, regardless of whether used light rumor, another program, I can only print this photos so big, right? I can up size it a certain amount. But if I try to up size this photo to a 36 by 48 print, I am gonna lose quality light room has to make up so many pixels that has to invent so many pixels that the photo starts to get softer. So they're definitely limitations. That how far you can go. Okay. Thank you. Okay, So the next scenario I want to show you is let's say that you've just worked. Ah, portrait, shoot. And you want to export those photos directly to a DVD to send off to a client. So back in the grid here, we're just gonna again just select a few photos, right? Click and say, export. I guess I couldn't hit the export button to kind of with a long way on this one by right clicking so up in the top here on export. I'm not gonna export to the hard driver. Certainly could I can exported the hard drive and then use any DVD burning CD DVD burning software, But I can also choose to export directly to CD or DVD now in light room for everybody has this in light room three US windows. 64 bit users did not have this, so we're all now happily reunited, and I can use this as well. So I love this ability to, you know, to get it all done in one step. So once you specify export to CD DVD, you no longer are saying where on your hard drive, the photos are going to go like room's gonna temporarily put him on your hard drive, moving to a DVD and then wipe them out now in light room three. That's not the case. You actually have, ah place to specify where they're going to go. But I would suggest that you choose the option that says Temporary folder so that they disappear from your hard drive afterwards as well. Same choices to rename same choices in terms of what? What kind of file is it that you want to put on DVD to send? Is it a small J peg? Full size J. Peg, Do you want a watermark? Do you want to sharpen, etcetera? Next here in the export dialog. I'll show you that you can export directly to adobe Revel Adobe Revel is used to be adobe carousel, and that's an adobe service that allows you to share your photos amongst your devices. Right now, it's only available for the Mac, so I haven't been able to play with it myself. But what you would do is authorize your account. You click on authorized here and you log in and it would verify that you have an accurate log in, and then you would be able to choose toe export to your care cells. All right, other options in here. I just want to I want to show you we go back to export to hard drive. We've talked about exporting J pegs. If I come down to the file setting section here, you can see that I have other choices as well. Now I'm not often exporting a photo shop file because I can just go light where edit in Photoshop tiffs might be for printing. But notice that you also have DMG so you can export a copy of your raw file that will include all of your work in there. So if you need to send off a raw file. That's how we would do it. And you can export as original. Now, what people don't often realize is that export as original means the original format. So for me, it would be my seer to raw file. But it also means, as it was originally captured, so it doesn't include my light room work. So most of the time, what I'm exporting as if I need to send off a raw file is as DMG so that it includes that light from work. Okay, I'm just glancing at my notes. See, I'm doing on time here. Looks good. Yeah. Super quick question when you Okay, so when you export is DMG does it include all of the develop work? It does. We just like it's not baked in, right? I mean, it's it's a set of instructions inside that DMG file. So if someone else imports it into light room, they will see and be able to work with your light room work. Yep. So that's how I export my class Examples to bring here to class. Yep. Now new in light room four. We've got some new DMG options here, so I'll go over them briefly. But I know some of you will be interested in this under compatibility here if you're gonna be sharing with people that have older versions of light women Photoshopped before light room 3.6. Before CS five, you're going to choose camera raw 5.4 and later. But if it's for your own purposes or someone that has light from 3. or like from four or photo shop CS five or later, then you can choose cameras 6.6 and later it gives you more options. Here you can embed the fast load data. I talked about that before. That just makes loading in the develop module faster may not be important for an export here, but you can also use lossy compression so you can reduce the file size of your D and G's in terms of megabytes. It's the Samos J peg compression. It's high quality J pic compression, basically done to a raw file. It's kind of it bends people's minds a little bit to think about, you know, a raw original file having lossy compression applied, but in my test for my files depends on the file but I can reduce the file size from 10 megabytes 25 megabytes just by using this lossy compression option. Now, when I look at the quality of it, when I zoom into 100% if I look at really smooth areas in a photo, I can see a little bit of loss of quality. But it's not very much OK. It's it's it's very good compression. I wouldn't do this to my master's. I wouldn't do this for the highest quality large prints, but to save file space in megabytes, it really is quite good. I also have the option with raw files. Now, if I use lossy compression here in light room four, not light from three, I can resize the raw file. Some of you, you know, you don't not going to need to use this at all. This is kind of exciting to me, but I can take a raw file and instead of 3500 pixels wide or 5000 pixels wide, I can just make it an 800 pixel wide file. So I have a small raw file great for me. I bring class examples in. They don't have to be big, high resolution versions, saved a lot of space and students computers, etcetera, etcetera. If you work with somebody else, you collaborate and you want them to see your work. You want to send him a DMG file so they can see in comment on your work. They may not need full resolution, so you can choose to make them smaller. So that's the new DMG features available here in the export dialog in light room. Any other questions other than video, any other questions on exports scenarios that you know you don't feel like you're clear on how you what you would do or the audience has? Yeah, there don't we have a quick question in the audience? I do have a quick question. Being a portrait photographer. A lot of clients want to know what is considered a high resolution file to print safe. You offer digital negatives to your clients, so eight by 10 is a by 20. And then I guess this might be kind of basic. But do you have to crop it first in light room to a 16 by 20 before you export it in the image sizing? Well, it's depends await the command exposed to visit with the client needs. But if I'm working like a pro level printing service, they expect you to send them exactly a crop to 60 by 2016 by 20 proportions and then sized here in the export dialog to 16 by 20 inches of 300. But if your if your customers really are gonna be working with, you know, a Shutterfly Costco type service, then you might be better off giving them uncrossed or un cropped photos. Me not crop to particular print sizes so that they can get whatever print sizes they want. As's faras what's considered high resolution. You know, it gets into, Ah, pretty deep discussion on how large of a photo can you make from a given original. And there's subjectivity involved in that as well, you know, I find that with my 10 megapixel camera. What is that? So that's maybe maybe that's one of those photos that we saw that was 3500 pixels by, you know, 2500 pixels that I can I can stretch that photo if I work really hard on sharpening. Maybe up to a 16 by 2016 by 24. But but beyond that, I'm does not satisfied with. That's my standards. Other people could blow it up larger. Other people would say No, you really shouldn't be going passed on 11 by 14 with that, so it's hard to really nail down. But if you if you take a photo, that's, let's say, um, I don't want to get into any math here because my brain isn't working well enough. But let's say it's 3000 pixels wide and it's gonna be printed at 300 pixels per inch. Well, without any upsizing or downsizing, you've got a 10 inch print, 300 divided by. Did I do that right? Thank you. Okay, so I've got a 10 inch print. Now I know light room can do upsizing pretty well. So I knowing go beyond 10 inches. Maybe I can go to 16 inches wide, and that's where the subjectivity of it comes in. So is re sizing the resize to fit different than cropping. Where essentially the same? No, that's a good question, because it's something that comes up all the time. Cropping has nothing to do with size. So when I'm in the in the, uh okay, are for crop. So Maddon soon. So I'm in the crop tool here. When I'm setting this four by 58 by 10. 16 by 20. I'm not setting the size upsetting this shape. Okay. Or if I choose one by one, it's clear what I'm copping to a square that I'm setting the shape here, not the size. This square that I'm cropping here could be a two by two photo When I end up printing it or exporting it, I can export is a two by two inch at 300. I could export it as a 20 by 20 at 300. So the shape of it gets set in the develop module the size of it, how big it is an inches and resolution or pixels get set in the export dialog. Thank you, but yeah, it's very, very common questions. I'm glad you asked. We have, um we do have a question in the chat room from Sam Cox. Is it possible to set up an export for print preset with unspecified print size and then light room will ask you the dimensions when you click the export. But no, it isn't. But I mean, it does kind of get back to it. And I'm glad that came up to just here to reinforce this idea of, um when I'm ready to, you know, I've got a preset set up. I'm gonna right click. Let's say I want to send out another print. I've already cropped this. Let's just pretend so I right click and I go to export. I can still use this printing preset of mine that I have said it 16 by 20. I would click on the preset, and then I would just scroll down and just change the size. But leave the other settings. But there isn't isn't a direct way to automate that. Okay? And there was one other question about exporting to CD DVD from MJ Seattle When exporting to a CD DVD, can you use limit file size to the sides of the DVD to optimize quality when it's exported? So, for example, with 700 megabytes that's only available on the city, you have to do the math yourself so you can Onley limit it on a file by file basis. Okay, now, I believe it's been a while since I've confirmed this, so I but I strongly believe incorrect on this. And that is that if your if your files span will need to span multiple DVDs, I believe light room is gonna prompt you to pop in a 2nd 1 Um, if someone knows otherwise, maybe they can write in. But if you do need to fit them onto one, you'll have Teoh to do the math to figure out what size on each individual file.