Mike Chaney's Tech Corner

Hi All

Something mentioned on another post thread talked about using/setting up in LR for QU to be an additional external editor choice ~ never noticed that as such before ???

However, what are the best required output choices in the following settings:-

File Format

Colour Space

Bit Depth

Resolution

Compression

TIA for the welcome feedback on this part of the setup :)

Hi

I don't think you will see much difference with any of the choices except Colour Space. I would use

Format - Tif

Colour Space - aRGB

Resolution - Doesn't matter unless you are using 'Original Size' in QI, there will  be no interpolation in LR.

Compression - None.

Although I use Lightroom for conversion and cataloguing,  I don't use this method as you can't choose where the rendered file is saved, and I like to export my print files to specific folders as maximum quality Jpegs so I can see them in the QI browser, but  there will be no difference in the final print with either method.

Brian

I always print from Lightroom through Qimage. However, I don't use it as an external editor. Instead I created two Export presets, called Qimage JPEG and Qimage TIFF, where Qimage is called at the end of the export process. You can select an external program to be called at the lower end of the export dialog. Contrary to the external editor, you can specify a separate directory, where the files to be printed should be saved. I have checked the option that the files should be added to my catalog, this way the directory with my prints shows up in the catalog. The export way let's you also t add a watermark, if you want.

As I follow the non-destructive workflow mostly, I discard usually my printed RGBs from time to time, because they are interim files, just send to Qimage. In order to keep track what I printed, I create either virtual copies for crops or special edits necessary for printing and mark them with blue color. A smart collection serves to show me all the images, I have printed.

This works quite well for printing 1 picture at a time. I recently sent 35 pictures from Lightroom to Qimage that way. Qimage opens after the first file is converted and has that file on the queue. You still have to wait for LR to finish its export queue. After LR is done converting you still have to select print sizes (unless you have one standard). Instead of calling Qimage from Lightroom I have a preset in LR that converts my files to 8bit aRGB Tiffs 360 ppi, renames them "LR3_Druck_{Filename}" and sends them to a folder called "_zum Drucker". Then I open Qimage and  - since I only print from that folder - all my files to print are there.

I use the same folder as preset folder for my Raw Therapee 4 work queue.

And of course I always empty the print folder after each print job; I don't keep my Tiffs - only if they are further worked on in Photoshop, but then they are saved together with the Raws in the original folder.

Thanks all for the feedback  :)

I take the point about saving any conversions with initial processing to a selected folder ~ this I have been doing but as I had only just really come across the "open in external editor" function at that time I thought oh what a good idea  :D

What I now need to do is look at "export presets" as advised by tgutgu (LR is still very much new territory to me) ~ I also need to look more into export options i.e. as PSD or TIFF to avoid any initial JPEG degradation once they are opening in QImage or indeed PS that could happen though granted any such losses would be tiny if exported and opened/saved in the external editors???

Thanks again ~ always good to try to improve the workflow  ;)

Opening and printing a jpg in QImage will not cause any image degradation, however many times it is printed. Degradation only happens when the jpg is opened and saved, as in Photoshop.

Brian