Create Amazing Layouts In Lightroom Classic’s Print Module

by Andrew S. Gibson
Create Amazing Layouts In Lightroom Classic's Print Module


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We’ve already covered a lot of creative products in this mini course, and today I’d like to encourage you to go to the Print module. You’ll be pleasantly surprised by its potential for creating beautiful layouts.

Note: These ideas apply to older versions of Lightroom such as Lightroom 5 and Lightroom 6, but not the newer Lightroom app for desktop, which doesn’t have a Print module.

What if I don’t own a printer?

Believe it or not you can use the Print module even if you don’t own a printer! That’s because you can turn the print layout into a JPEG file that you can use anywhere. Here are some of the ways you can put it to use.

• Send it to an online printing service to make your prints. This is a cost efficient way of working if you only need a few prints, or if you need extra large prints.

• Add it to a photo book.

• Use an online printing service to create postcards, flyers or business cards using your designs.

Create amazing layouts in the Print module

With a little imagination and know-how you can use the Print module to create amazing layouts. These examples should give you plenty of inspiration.

Contact sheets in the Print module

Does the sight of contact sheets make you feel all nostalgic? Then you’ll love Lightroom Classic’s Print module.

Contact sheet type designs work best when all the photos have the same orientation and aspect ratio. You can also add text.

Lightroom Classic Print module layout

Family photos in the Print module

Putting family portraits on the wall is a great reason to use the Print module. You can get super-creative with your layouts. As a result your prints will look sleek and modern.

Lightroom Classic Print module layout

Here’s another example.

Lightroom Classic Print module layout

Get arty in the Print module

You know those arty layouts with black borders you see in the shops? Guess what…they’re easy to put together in the Print module as well.

Lightroom Classic Print module layout

Here’s a version with five photos. This is an effective approach when used with a sequence of photos of similar subjects (I photographed these doors in South America).

Lightroom Classic Print module layout

Postcards and flyers in the Print module

Would you like to make some postcards or flyers to promote your business or your photography? That’s easy in the Print module. Even better you can save the layout as a template and use it again with different photos.

Lightroom Classic Print module layout

Here’s another layout displaying only part of each photo. It’s highly effective with artwork and fine art photos. The black background gives it a sophisticated feel.

Lightroom Classic Print module layout

Make your own calendars in the Print module

You can also make your own calendars in the Print module. You’ll need a little help, and you get in the form of Ed Weaver’s calendar graphics and templates.

This screenshot shows one of Ed’s calendar templates. If you don’t like the design you can tinker with the JPEG files in Photoshop, or use them as a guide for creating your own.

Lightroom Classic Print module layout

Funky multi-photo layouts

As your confidence grows you can try funky multi-photo layouts like the ones below. These are an easy way of fitting more than one photo into the same frame. You could also export JPEG files to use in the Book module, which doesn’t have these layouts.

Lightroom Classic Print module layout
Lightroom Classic Print module layout
Lightroom Classic Print module layout
Lightroom Classic Print module layout
Lightroom Classic Print module layout

Final thoughts

That’s a wrap on our Get The Best From Lightroom Classic mini course. If you’ve read all four tutorials you should be fired up to turn your best photos into creative projects! You’ll also understand the importance of editing (as in selecting the best ones) your photos and organizing them in synced Collections. It lets you access your photos in Adobe Portfolio, Spark Post and Spark Page as well as the Book and Print modules.




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4 comments

Brian Brooks March 25, 2020 - 12:54 pm

Hi Andrew, with regard to printing, I avoid Lightroom like the plague. I find that my image is a sheet of A4 with a postage stamp in the middle. Any thoughts about this would be appreciated. Like the latest mag. great ideas on B/W. Thanks, Brian

Reply
Andrew S. Gibson March 26, 2020 - 7:26 am

Hi Brian, that’s an odd one. It’s never happened to me. It could be something to do with a setting in your printer software. I suggest posting your question in the Lightroom Queen forum to see if anybody else has had the same experience. It has lots of users so the odds are higher that somebody else has had the same problem and found the solution.

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/community/

Reply
Jay Hessey August 8, 2020 - 7:24 pm

I often take the same photo with different white balance, metering setting, fstop, etc settings so that I can learn how those affect different situations. After I upload to LRC, I can only see a few metadata categories in the right hand column for each photo when in grid mode. Can I expand the list of metadata categories for each photo so I can compare two photos with more info? Are they not already embedded in the file? Thanks as always for you efforts

jay

Reply
Andrew S. Gibson August 8, 2020 - 8:29 pm

Hi Jay, check out the menu at the top of the Metadata panel and go through the different options to see different sets of metadata. Lightroom Classic lets you see most of the metadata in the active photo file, but there’s no way to compare the metadata of two different photos without using a plugin. John Beardsworth’s ListView plugin does what you need and is worth a look:

https://photographers-toolbox.com/products/jbeardsworth/listview/

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