Create tangible memories with prints!

Which file format you should use when taking photographs. Is raw always the best option and what to consider when using jpgs?

8 bit or 16 bit per channel. 256 or 65.536 tonal steps. What to use and why? You will find all answers to your questions in this video.

What are DPI, and when do they matter? Dots per inch are good to set up right for printing, but do you need them when you export for screen-usages?

Can you print photos download from a website? With just 72 dpi. Yes or no?

sRGB, Adobe RGB, profiles for paper… there are some things to consider when working with photos.

Nowadays, we use cameras with plenty of megapixels. But why do we really need so many pixels? The answer is: you can crop – a lot! And in Lightroom we can display the let pixels directly in the crop overlay.

Lightrooms ability to clean your images is amazing. With the spot removal, you can work really fast to remove all distracting spots easily. And the best: you can even copy and paste the position information to other images as well.

When you want to jump from Lightroom to Photoshop, you have to consider the settings how the file gets handed over. In this video, I will show how to set up both applications to work perfectly together.

To work really fast, it’s great to use Photoshops tool presets function. I will share my tool presets with you, so you can work without any hassles and become super fast at your image editing work!

To work flexible in Photoshop, layers are a crucial part in the workflow. Removing distracting elements can be done fast with the spot healing brush. Learn now how this works

Some situations need special tools or tool combinations. Tools with content aware technologies tend to have problems with contrast-rich edges. So you have to use the clone stamp tool to separate the problematic areas from these edges. After that, it’s easy to use the spot healing brush or healing brush to clean the image areas.

You can fill bigger areas with content aware fill. This dialog gives a lot of options to select the sample areas. If the result isn’t as expected in the first try, just try it again. It’s so fast, that there is nearly no time lost. In contrast to manual work.

If you want to retouch a curve, it’s most of the time easier to use image parts and mask them over the problematic areas. How you can work with free transform and image wrap to fine tune this areas is part of this lesson.

The ability to just apply color to photo areas is quite powerful. To do so, you need to set the layer blend mode to “color” and start painting with the brush. Because you’re only effecting the colors in this blend mode, all lighting information remains from the layers below.

To create “final” images, you have some choices. But the most common in the photographic workflow are JPG and TIF. I will show you exactly what’I’ll show you exactly what the difference is between the two. So you can decide, if you go for maximum quality and huge file size or for a good balance between quality AND file size.

What’s a good size to export your images for a website. Find out more in this lesson and also see the squarespace recommendation.

When working with files in Photoshop directly (without coming from Lightroom), you can export via the export dialog. Therein you will find file format, resize options that are just for the exported image and a handy file size display, so you know exactly how big the exported file is on the hard drive of the server.

Whitewall.com offers extensive possibilities to print your images. I will demonstrate in this video how to set up your files for printing with them. One step is to download and use the ICC-profile associated with your chosen print material.

With a soft proof, you are able to see on your screen how the print will look on paper. Therefore, the screen have to be calibrated and the lighting conditions must be controlled. If this is the case, you can see how certain colors will be out of gamut, and you are able to tweak them, so everything is under your control. BUT: if you don’t soft proof and don’t correct ether, it’s not as big of a deal. Because the print will most certainly don’t hang next to your screen, and so your eyes will adapt to the environment of the print on the wall.

In this video, you will learn how to set up Photoshops print dialog for printing.

Learn how to print with the print module inside Lightroom Classic.

Mirage from DinAX is a very powerful printing tool. Since I use Mirage, I don’t have failed prints (besides where I messed up – wrong paper side up, wrong profile,…). I can highly recommend Mirage if you consider printing at home!

I create my photo books with blurb.com most of the time directly out of Lightroom Classic. In this first video of the chapter on book printing, I introduce you to the possibilities that blurb has to offer.

In this video, we will explore the book module inside Lightroom Classic. When finished your book, you can directly upload from Lightroom Classic to blurb.

If you encounter upload problems within the book module, you can export via pdf. This pdf can be uploaded manually to blurb and if ready for your order! Small workaround but immense time safer.

If you want to work outside Lightroom, you have to export the developed photos. What settings you should use is the topic of this lesson.

Blurb provides a powerful plugin for InDesign. I demonstrate how to download, install and set up your book inside InDesign with this plugin. After that, you can directly create a pdf and upload it to blurb.

Serif offers with Affinity Publisher a valuable and powerful alternative for InDesign. How this application can be used for creating books with blurb is the content of this lesson.

Now it’s your turn. Print your images and share your experiences with the world.