Best Practice?: Snapshot Production for Costco Printing

[reidthaler]

I've got another LR user friend that asked me to think of a good way to crank out 4x6 images for some overdue family photobooks.

My thinking is to have 2 presets, one for vertical, and one for horizontal.

The presets would have a 4x6 crop, some clarity, medium contrast, and a bit of saturation.

Can you also include auto tone in a preset?

Then I would have an export profile to resize to 3'' dpi, jpg and also create a droplet to convert images to Costco's printer colorspace.

Then, my friend could just go in adjust the crop and export.

Any other thoughts or ideas? I'm open to suggestions.

Thanks!

 

[Brad Snyder]

Reid, Welcome to LR Forums.

Yes, you can add auto tone to a preset.

I'm not sure that you need the droplet to go to Costco's colorspace. Are you talking about using their printer profiles? Seems like overkill for snapshots; on the other hand if you want it, go for it. If you're just talking about going to sRGB for their standard output, LR can do that on export.

I'm pretty sure that LR2 Beta can print to JPEGs, with embedded profiles, and with export sharpening as well, so you may want to look at that too. I don't have the Beta installed right now, so I can't verify that, I may be remembering wishlists vs. reality.
I'm sure somebody can confirm that one way or the other.

 

[Sean McCormack]

First things first: You can't yet store a Crop in a preset.. you can batch apply one though. 6X4 is the standard crop for most DSLRs anyhow (Yes 4/3rds users I know it's not for you).
Second as Brad says, you can Print to: JPEG in Beta 2 and assign a profile in the same way as you do for Lightroom managed prints (i.e. click Other and select the Profile). This might be worth doing as a quick video tutorial actually.

 

[Denis Pagé]

I tryed their 1 hour service once. Waiting for my turn to come, I saw the operator in front of a monitor (calibrated?) :roll: tweaking each image to her taste before sending to print... When it was my turn, I was told that my photos can't be done before the next day because I had ±2''. But I really needed them within 2 hours! As I noticed on the enveloppe we have to fill that there is a "Special Instructions" window, I wrote "DO NOTHING but just print!"; As I worked them to best in Lightroom already. Explaining it at the counter (just print), they managed to do it within 1½ hour.

The lesson is: If they are to tweak your work further, why care so much? Or, if you want to keep control, do not forget to tell them not to tweak but just pint AS IS!

P.S.: I prepared with embedding sRGB and "Minimize Metadata" unchecked. They came OK.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

My thinking is to have 2 presets, one for vertical, and one for horizontal.

Let me add another welcome to the forum, and clarify one other point for you - you won't need different vertical/horizontal presets either - the crop is intelligent enough to rotate correctly, and in the Export dialog you can set to an overall export dimensions that will also resize either orientation.