STEP ONE: The nameplate I’m going to create uses your signature, and there are a couple of ways to get your signature into Photoshop:

(1) Take a nice blank ink pen and sign your name on a fairly large piece of paper, then take a photo of your signature with your phone. Open that photo in Photoshop; take the Magic Wand tool, click it anywhere on the background (to select everything but your signature), then

(2) if you’re lucky enough to have a graphics tablet, then go to Photoshop, open a new document, 6”x3” with a resolution of 240, and then set your foreground color to black, choose a small hard-edged brush from the Brush Picker, and sign your name and save the file. Easy enough.

STEP TWO: Open a new document that is 6”x3” at a resolution of 240, then open up your signature file and drag it onto this document. In the Layers palette, lower the Opacity of this layer to 20% (as shown here), so your signature looks light gray.

STEP THREE: Go ahead and hide that signature layer by clicking on the eye icon next to Layer 1. Now, get the Type tool and type in your studio’s name. In my case, I typed in “Scott Kelby Photography” (I know — how original). The font I chose is Trajan Pro, which, if you don’t already have it installed, you can download it from Adobe’s Creative Cloud app. Add lots of space between the letters. In my example in class, I set the Tracking (space between letters) in the Character palette to 600.

STEP FOUR: Make your signature layer visible once your text is in place. Now, select all three layers (the Background, Layer 1, and your Type layer), go up to the Options Bar, and click on the Center Alignment icon (as shown above) to perfectly center your elements within your image area. Flatten your image layers, and now save your file as a JPEG.

STEP FIVE: Now go to the Lightroom, to the Print Module, and in the Page panel, turn on the Identity Plate checkbox. Then, in the Identity Plate preview, click on the little down-facing arrow in the bottom right corner to bring up a pop-up menu. From that menu, choose Edit to bring up the “Identity Plate Editor” dialog shown above. Click on the “Use a graphical identity plate” button (as shown above), then navigate to your newly saved signature file and choose it. Now, it will appear on your printed page, and you can drag to position it where you want it. That’s all there is to it.

Above: here’s how the nameplate looks at the bottom of a print. As I mentioned at the top, you can also import this nameplate into the slideshow module as well.

There you have it.

UNRELATED NOTE: It’s a BIG divisional playoff weekend for my Bucs. We’re playing the Detroit Lions up in Detriot at Ford Field (a very nice dome stadium – I shot a Bears/Lions there a few years back). However, although of course I want the Bucs to win, I do like the Lions. They are a super tough team this year, and I’ve been rooting for them all season, so if the Bucs lose to them (which is likely – the Lions are favored to win), at least it’s to the Lions, which haven’t been this far in the playoffs in 30+ years, so they definitely earned it. However, if the Bucs do win…OMG!!!! Hey, like I said last Friday…it could happen.

Have a great divisional playoff weekend!

-Scott

The post How To Use Lightroom’s Identity Plate to Add a Fine Art Signature Nameplate appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

Here’s why: when you have 20 or 30 photos in one print like this, even though those images are really small (maybe just 2″ wide or less each), all 20 or 30 high-resolution images first have to download fully into your printer before the print makes its way out of your printer. That’s why it takes so long for them to print.

But when you go to the Print Job panel in Lightroom Classic and turn on “Draft Mode Printing” (shown above) now it sends a low-res preview version of each image to the printer instead of making you wait for each high-resolution image to render, so the print comes out MUCH faster, but the quality is still great because the size of each image is so small (and yes – you still have plenty of resolution for those small image sizes).

Give this “Draft Mode Printing” feature a try next time you’re doing a multi-photo layout, and you’ll be amazed at how great those images look even though they’re just the low-resolution preview versions (in fact, I doubt you’ll be able to tell the difference from the full high-res originals).

Now, that being said: don’t be seduced by this draft mode printing — it’s just for use in these multi-photo layouts where you have a lot of small-sized images. I’ve talked to people who love draft mode printing so much, they use it for most everything because it’s so fast, but you will notice a difference if you’re printing just one or two images per sheet because now the images are large enough to where you’ll see that difference

Hope you find that helpful, and let me know what you think of draft mode once you get a chance to try it.

Have a great weekend, everybody!

-Scott

P.S. Are you going to the “Photography Gear Conference” next month? Get the scoop here.

The post When to Use Lightroom’s Awesome “Draft Mode” Printing (and when not to) appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

Obviously, you’d need to be running the cloud-based version of Lightroom and have that installed on your computer. From there, click the + sign next to Connections to open the connections manager (for lack of a better name.

From here you can choose among the available online options for creating prints online. I’ve used both Printique and WHCC and have been happy with the results. For a recent project I wanted to print a photo of my son on wood and give it to my wife for her birthday. He’s gotten into wood working lately and she loved a recent photo of him, so it seemed like a perfect idea.

To create the connection, click the aptly named Add Connection button next to the service you want to use. I do recommend visiting the service’s website ahead of time and creating a free account so it is all set up when you connect. Once you’ve added the connection you can close the connection manager, and you’ll see a welcome and get started screen for that service.

Lightroom literally handholds you through the process of creating your first project. My recommendation is to have already created an album containing the photo(s) you want to print to make it easy to select them in the next step. After clicking the Get Started button a little blue dot guides you through each step.

In my case I had already edited the photo and cropped it to a square aspect ratio, so it was ready to be sent off to be printed. I’d recommend doing the same before proceeding.

The blue dot will guide you to click on All Photos to select the photos you want to send to the service. Instead, go to the album you created, select the photo(s) you want to send, then go click All Photos. This way the photo you want is already selected when All Photos opens. Now, you don’t need to do that every time after this. This is only the first time it guides you through the process.

With my photo selected, I clicked Continue in the blue box. From there, the blue dot guides you up to the Share button.

Click the Share button and you’ll see the service you added at the bottom of the list.

Give the project a name and click Continue to have the photo handed off to the service where you can choose your desired print media and so on. You should get prompted to sign in as part of the handoff, and then you’re in. From here the options will vary based on the service you are using. This is just what it looks like at WHCC right now.

I chose the 10×10 wood block print. It took about 4-5 days before it shipped and then a few more to arrive. I think it may have been about 10 days from when I ordered to arrival, but days seem to blend together anymore. I’m very happy with the results and I hope my wife will be too. Give Connections a try and let me know what you think!

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