hey guys welcome or welcome back thanks so much for joining me
today we are going to go through how to prepare files for printing
so like I have just said we're going to look at how to prep files for print and we're
actually going to order a print today whilst we're recording this because I think it is really useful
to basically just see the end to end instead of pretending that we're pretending so we're actually
going to order this particular file that you guys can see on the screen right now so this is at the
kind of end of the editing stage I've kind of done my normal workflow and it's still a large
document format it's still in 330ppi and it is in profoto rgb 16bit so we can't send that to print
at all so first things first guys is to go ahead and look at your print house
so let's go and have a look at mine okey doke so this is my print lab obviously
Digitalab love Digitalab we're going to order a fine art print from Digitalab
so what you need to go ahead and do is look at what your print house uses and
usually this is in the kind of footer area or in the FAQ so let's go ahead and try and find
the print guidance okay so down in the footer was the file setup link which basically goes through
what we want to print in the simplest way so what we're looking at doing is just looking at what we
need to upload so Digitalab need to have sent over jpeg file the best results we need to get
srgb colour space they should be in 8-bit mode and so realistically you also need to have it exported
at 300 pixels per inch and essentially that's just kind of what we need to do which is absolutely
fine no problem at all so we know that we are in the wrong colour space we are in the wrong bit
depth and we are we could tweak the resolution first steps first is to basically prep this for
print now the best way to go here is to just check your highlights and your shadow clipping
because I think that's so important so we'll just pop another levels adjustment layer on there and
what we want to look at is when we hold down alt or option and click on one of the arrows does
anything show up so with the blacks arrow no there is no black clipping and with the whites arrow
there is a tiny bit of clipping and it's in the eye so I'm okay with that that means that my file
is exposed well if there was a million miles from the last point that you can see so say for example
the point on this side was like here then your image is underexposed so close the gap to ensure
that the exposure is correct so when you've done that you can go ahead and flatten your image
so right click flatten image with a flattened image then in my personal workflow I go image
mode 8 bits and then I go edit convert to profile srgb okay so when I've done that my image is now
in Adobe srgb 8-bit and the resolution will be absolutely fine now I'm going to print a fine art
print and I know that my fine art paper because test prints are good guys I know that my fine art
paper will lift the shadows a bit I'm fine with that but the aspect ratio that I want to be using
is actually a 12 by 8 so I'm going to go ahead and put in here 12 by 8 which switches it to the
correct aspect ratio and then I want to just crop appropriately to a point that I'm happy with which
is about there to be honest with you and lock that in so with that now done I'm then going to save it
ready for print so it's going to be a file save as so you can always make a new folder called a print
ready if you want to and then we need to change the file format into jpeg without saving through
the jpeg we need to make sure that we can embed the colour profile here so we're going to click
save and then within the jpeg options window we want to make sure that the quality is at the
highest the format option is baseline standard and that's going to give us the biggest file
size so you can go ahead and click ok on there one thing that I personally tend to do is I actually
resize my files to the correct size so although that jpeg will work absolutely fine I usually do
do image image size and then within image size I change where it says pixels to inches and then
I change my width and height to the print size so in this case it's 12 inches wide by 8 inches high
and if you want to resample them that's fine it's up to you to whether you choose automatic or one
of the other options and then click ok that now is the actual size that that's going to print so
what I'm going to do is I'm going to save again in the same folder and just add 12 by 8 to the end of
the file name and then I'm going to click save all the same and then that is done so to order
our print we need to go ahead and get the product ready so we're going to go for a fine art print
we are going to go for an omega rag so my omega rags I want a 12x8 omega rag which
is just here so I'm going to click on there and then I'm going to go ahead to continue
I'm going to add file and I'm going to go ahead and choose my print ready 12x8 file and click open
with that file there I'm going to start the upload process that will upload should be absolutely fine
and with that done we then need to just double check everything's fine so the red box is the crop
size there the size of the prints there how many copies we've got is there the finish is there
but you could choose any of the options there I just personally use omega rag because I adore it
that was what I print my award images on and I just think it's beautiful works well with
my style so with that done we're then going to proceed to check out and buy the item so that's
it guys the order is placed and that is pretty much exactly how to order prints in my personal
workflow that is the prep work that I do I make sure that the size is correct I make sure that
the bit depth is correct that the colour profile is correct that there are not clipped highlights
and clipped shadows that the exposure is correct and of course make sure that the sharpness and the
focal point is fine but other than that really I don't do anything different and this is the
exact same workflow that I use to send files for wall art and all sorts of other stuff the only
difference is in my fine art float frame which is a beautiful wall art piece that has layers of kind
of varnish applied to it so it darkens and adds contrast so in those situations I usually go ahead
and add a brightness contrast adjustment layer and increase the brightness by about 10 and decrease
the contrast by about 10. Then when it comes to me it ends up being exactly the same as that
and not super dark or super high contrast but that is literally the only other thing if there's one
thing that I can suggest to you guys is to do test prints and do as many test prints as you need to
do to the point where you can trust your settings and when you've got that done everything else will
be absolutely fine if you haven't already please remember to press the subscribe button and hit the
bell icon the bell icon will help you out it'll give you a notification every single time I upload
a video I upload every week and sometimes more than that if I feel like it I hope this video was
helpful for you and if it was please let me know I will see you all again really really really soon