printing in LR 2.5, backup

[plq]

Being new to LR (current Aperture user, but doubting) 2.5, I have some questions:

1. is there a way to crop photos to predetermined aspect rations, like A4 paper standards (21' * 297 mm)?

2. is the backup mechanism incremental, or is the entire data backed up every time?

3. does LR 2.5 produce good prints on Epson printers (R24'')?

4. How much memory should you reasonably have on a Mac with 1'.5 or 1'.6 to run LR 2.5?

These questions are from a potential switcher from Aperture. The one feature that attracted my
attention was the import feature, that also makes a copy of the individual picture files, and one that
is nicely organised. Makes for an orderly way to achieve a high degree of security.

Also like the fact that LR does care where the files are (other than performance), whereas Aperture
requires them to be on your local machine - network attached storage is out. Thus, RAID becomes
cumbersome.

Thanks for your answers!!

peter

 

[Conor Boyd]

Thoughts on the first two, can't help with the others.

1. Yes, you can create your own custom crops in the Develop module. You can also create your own custom templates in the Print module (if you create an A4 template, and have the Zoom To Fit option checked, then it will act like a crop at print time).
2. The LR backup is not incremental.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Hi Peter, welcome to the forum!

I'll add to Conor's thoughts....

2. Also bear in mind that LR's own backup only backs up the catalog - the data about the files such as your settings - and not the images themselves. But you need a solid whole computer backup system anyway, so hopefully you've already got backups in place anyway.

3. It can produce prints as well as any other program

4. 1gb is the absolute minimum for it to even run, but it doesn't run well on that little. This is one case where more is better. If you want numbers, from personal experience, 2gb always felt tight to me, 4gb runs ok on my laptop, 14gb on my desktop runs that and six million other programs very nicely (ok, slight exaggeration, but you get the idea!).

 

[Mark Sirota]

One more on aspect ratio -- 5x7 is already there, and is very close to A4 (just 3mm short on the long side). But if you want to be precise, you can enter your own as Conor said.