Exporting files on lightroom

The Darkroom

Hi there, I am just a father of 2 who has taken an interest in getting good photos of my kids so I am not professional at all. I was wanting to pick your brains here as to exporting files and taking them to a professional printing shop in town. at the moment I've a big file of 24.4 MB exported at 300ppi, sharpened for screen. I am wondering if I can just hand these to the printer to get framed the way it is and he will have a look at the file and re-edit its size to suit a print lets say of 16x12 or 16x20? the reason I ask is I am hearing all this stuff about ppi and dpi and that if you're exporting files to be framed on a wall they need to be exported at something like 240dpi. are ppi and dpi the same thing? or does one refer to the computer and the other refer to the printer? I am confused and don't want an image of my son coming out all wrong looking.

Thanks for all your help

Paulw

Worry less about the ppi (pixels per inch) and dpi (dots per inch). Yes, one is for screen, the other for print.

You are better off cropping the image yourself, to the size you want it printed. Otherwise, they might cut/crop out something you feel is important to the image. You can crop it easy enough in lightroom.

Then just export the file. Depending on the print size, etc, I would always export at the largest possible size for print. Better to have more info than needed. Export it at 100% quality, don't resize (full size) and 240-300 ppi. You can also select sharpen for paper rather than screen.

Hopefully that helps. If in doubt, talk to Steve (stcstc) at www.360-dpi.com He will produce high quality prints for you, and can print/mount/frame or anything you need at a good price.

Kenny Logins

Just multiply the desired print size inches by 300 when exporting, so 16" x 20" will be 4800 x 6000 pixels. Don't enlarge it though if it's smaller than this. If they print at 240 it'll be fine.

The Darkroom

Thanks lads that has been a great help. is it not possible to print an image and not have any of it cropped at all? I like how it is at the moment and how I framed it in the camera ya see.

seeing as the ppi, dpi and file size is already up for disscussion I had another question. I have a simple wee blog online and sometimes I take photos of places around the town and share it with my readers but have found that wordpress wont accept big files and I keep getting an error message. whats the best way to resize an image for wordpress? its weird because they say that they accept files up to 1GB and my file size may be anywhere from 11 to 24mb and still won't upload.

that guys website looks great by the way I'm definitely gonna give him a call.

Kenny Logins

That's probably a php memory allocation error. I bet you can upload the file but it fails when trying to resize for the various thumbnail sizes dictated by your current theme. It'll return a media something error? Fixing it requires adding/editing a line of code in wp-config.php.

...or you could output the images optimised and sized for web use before uploading, say 1280 pixels long side or something? I'd aim to get jpegs under 1mb, as Wordpress will resize again anyway.

I also use the www.jpegmini.com app to crunch the file sizes before uploading.

Building a library of Lightroom output settings will really help here.

The Darkroom

Yes that is the error I get. Is there a general code that you know of to enter for it? If you have any links or advice on how to fix that, that would be great as it's a real pain. I don't understand, for the first few pictures it worked and now it isn't working. should I change the theme perhaps?

Thank you for all the additional advice also on resizing too.

Kenny Logins

No, it's not really a theme issue, most themes will resize to a few different sizes upon uploading.

I added this to wp-config.php when I was getting upload errors.

/** Increase memory allocated to PHP. */
define( 'WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '64M' );
define( 'WP_MAX_MEMORY_LIMIT', '256M' );

http://codex.wordpress.org/Editing_wp-config.php#Increasing_memory_allocated_to_PHP

The Darkroom

can I do this when on a free wordpress.com site? If so what are the steps that I use to put in this code? total beginner here sorry. :-(

Kenny Logins

Ah, sorry, I assumed you have your own Wordpress.org install.

In that case, you may have to resize for web use before uploading.

The Darkroom

Kenny Logins wrote: »

Ah, sorry, I assumed you have your own Wordpress.org install.

In that case, you may have to resize for web use before uploading.

thanks Kenny, I may upgrade sometime and that info will be very useful so thanks very much for it. Is there a particular size for web you would recommend?

Kenny Logins

Depends on the theme again, and what max size it displays at, and if the image links to the full size photo..etc. if you want that...

2048px long side would be the max size I'd upload to a Wordpress site, but 1280px should be fine for most blogs.

You'll see the sizes here - http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/media-settings/ (default image size in a post is 1024 max)

Tiriel

What you could do, is use a Pix.ie account for your photos. Then you have the option to use what size you need from their 'other sizes' for your Wordpress account. Saves you having to resize?

The Darkroom

I must try out this pix.ie. I have good news though. I've uploaded the file to wordpress last night and had no problem so I am confused now. perhaps it was a bug or something on wordpress end? weird, but the resizing definitely works too and actually makes for a quicker upload so that is great. thanks everyone for the advice. Is pix.ie free?

Tiriel

The Darkroom wrote: »

I must try out this pix.ie. I have good news though. I've uploaded the file to wordpress last night and had no problem so I am confused now. perhaps it was a bug or something on wordpress end? weird, but the resizing definitely works too and actually makes for a quicker upload so that is great. thanks everyone for the advice. Is pix.ie free?

Yep - quite a few of us are over there

The Darkroom

Cork_girl wrote: »

Yep - quite a few of us are over there

what is the whole point of it though? is it like the photobucket of Ireland or something? sounds good.

Tiriel

The Darkroom wrote: »

what is the whole point of it though? is it like the photobucket of Ireland or something? sounds good.

I guess you could say it's a place to backup and share your photos. It makes it easy to post photos elsewhere online, such as in the random thread here. You can change the privacy of shots depending on whether you want them public or private and get feedback/comments from others.

It's great for when a group go on photowalks together, you get to take a look at what others have taken - surprising how everyone sees things differently and you might only see one or two shots here on boards.

Probably closer to Flickr than photobucket!

Kenny Logins

The Darkroom wrote: »

what is the whole point of it though? is it like the photobucket of Ireland or something? sounds good.

Photobucket is just that; a bucket to throw your photos into. Not good.

The Darkroom

Kenny Logins wrote: »

Photobucket is just that; a bucket to throw your photos into. Not good.

hahah thanks Kenny, Yeah I've also just been checking out foto factory.ie which looks great too.