When to Use Lightroom’s Awesome “Draft Mode” Printing

If you’re printing a multi-photo layout (there’s one below for example), I would encourage to turn on “Draft Mode Printing” (as seen above) to have your print come out of the printer much faster (like, ridiculously faster).

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.

We Could Possibly See Some New Lightroom Features Released Tomorrow

Hey, it’s possible, because tomorrow morning is the opening keynote for Adobe’s MAX conference, and historically they’ve announced new Lightroom and Photoshop updates during the keynote. So, since this is historically the case, Rob will be posting here tomorrow (instead of his usual Wednesday) just in case they do release new Lightroom features.

Catch My “Maybe There Will Be New Lightroom & Photoshop Features” Webcast tomorrow

At 11:00 am tomorrow ET, I’m doing a Webcast for KelbyOne members just in case Adobe does indeed announce new features. If they do, I’ll be showing them, if, ya know, they are announced. So, stop by tomorrow to see if history is on our side, and then if you’re a KelbyOne member, drop in and see what, if anything, is up.

-Scott

P.S. Are you going to ‘The Flash Conference?” It’s going to be awesome. Get the scoop here.