Allen Gambrell

I have been testing the new beta of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.0 Beta and I came up a few ideas for the print module. I posted my ideas on the beta forum. If you like them please reply to the post on the forums to let the developers know.

1. Identity Plate as Logo on images

Every image that I print in my studio has my logo on it. It does not go out the door without one. To me the printing in Lightroom is nice for personal stuff but it is too hard to put on a logo for production work.

The Identity Plate could easily be adapted to put a logo on the image. All we need is to check render on every image. The problem is that this puts in in the center of each image.

We also need a setting to choose a anchor for the plate. The choices would be the 4 corners and the center. This location needs to be based off the rotation of the image not the cell. So if choice the bottom right the logo would always be in the bottom right of the image every if the image was rotated on the paper.

Now we need to scale the logo to the print. The easiest way to do this is to add another slider to size the logo based on the size of the printed image. The slider would need to go from 1% to 100%. So if you set it to 8% the size of the logo would be 8% of the printed image size. The best way to calculate this is to use the longest side of the printed image and the longest side of the logo. This way The logo would be the same size on a vertical 8×10 as it would on a horizontal 8×10.

2. Filename and other metadata on package

Filename and other metadata needs to be able to be printed on the package page. This needs to be a small area that you can move to different areas of the layout like the identity plate. We need to be able to choose what information we want and the size of the font.

3. Custom Print Sizes when printing to file

We need to be able to enter the dimensions in inchs and it convert it by the number used for file resolution. I am trying to print on a 7in x 20in file at 254 dpi. I have to calculate this out manually and the whole process is nothing like the normal print dialog.

To me the best thing to do would be to remove the print setting and the page setup buttons and make a new page setup just for print to file. That way you could have more of the same interface that you do when printing to a printer.

4. Output File Naming

Need the ability to setup the output file naming when printing to file. I don;t want to have to choose the location and type in a name for every image that I print. This needs to be setup exactly like the export file naming with the tokens, metadata and custom text to name the file. We also need a token for the name of the saved template you are printing and the location of the output files needs to be stored in the template.

5. Output to Tiff

Sometimes we need to output to something other than jpg, mot much but sometimes.

6. More than one image on package

I know this one is the hardest to make happen, but If we could have the ability to place multiple image on a layout it could open up the options that the picture package could be used for.

7. Custom Layout mode

Along the same lines as the multiple images. It would be great if we could layout a page however we like. Use as many images as we want and custom sizes for each. Also each cell would need controls like fit and zoom for it and not globally. Other controls like opacity and applying develop presets to the cells would allow you to use lightroom for many things like album layout, composites and custom products. Lightroom has all this built in we just need access to the setting to do it.

I know this would take some time, but it is the type thing that would be great if we had a full sdk so we could make or own modules.