Today’s Question: I am about to enter a competition at a gallery and need to print out my photos. I have calibrated my monitor with Colormunkie. I do not have a professional printer as of yet and need to send out my images to an outside printer.
Questions:
1) I have downloaded the paper/printer profile to my computer hard drive from the printer but do not know how to add this to the file using Lightroom.
2) Should I send the image as a TIFF or a JPEG? The printer accepts both. Don’t I lose some image information if I convert to a JPEG?
Tim’s Quick Answer: You can convert the image to a specific profile using the Color Space option in the File Settings section of the Export dialog. And I certainly recommend using the TIFF file format rather than JPEG, as some quality will be lost if you choose the JPEG format.
More Detail: Before you can actually use the profile for the images you export from Lightroom you need to copy that profile to the Profiles folder on your computer. On Macintosh you can copy the profile to the Library > ColorSync > Profiles folder on your startup disk. On Windows you can simply right-click the profile and choose Install Profile from the popup menu. With the profile installed you can proceed with the export process in Lightroom.
When you export an image from Lightroom you can choose a specific profile to use for the resulting image file. To get started, select the image you want to export and click the Export button at the bottom of the left panel in the Library module. This will bring up the Export dialog, where you can specify the various settings for the image file that will be created upon export.
In the File Settings section of the Export dialog you can set the Image Format option to TIFF. I recommend leaving the Compression option set to None (rather than ZIP) unless you have confirmed with the printer that they are using software (such as Photoshop) that supports ZIP compression for TIFF images.
To actually set the profile for the image, first click the Color Space popup, and then choose Other from the popup. Turn on the checkbox for the applicable profile, and click OK in the Choose Profiles dialog. The profile will then be available (and selected) on the Color Space popup.
You can then set the other options for the export, such as setting the output size for the image in the Image Sizing section. Depending on the specific print process being used, you will probably want to use a resolution of between about 300 and 400 pixels per inch at the specific output size for the print.
All of the other settings can be established based on your preferences (or based on instructions from the printer). Once you’ve finalized the settings, if you anticipate needing to export other images with the same settings you may want to save a preset. To do so, click the Add button at the bottom of the list of presets on the left side of the Export dialog, enter a name for the preset, and click Create.
With all of the settings established for the image (including the location where you want the image saved with the settings in the Export Location section at the top of the dialog) you can click the Export button in the Export dialog, and the selected image will be processed based on the settings you’ve established.