Costco.ca Printing Profiles using LR 3

I am aware of the importance of specific profiles for certain papers and printers and do this at my home studio all the time.

However I plan to give Costco here in Ontario a try using their Noritsu printers.

I have the right profile for the Nortisu printer in question from Dry Creek photo. I can only send a 8MB JPEG photo to them and have them printed on glossy or matte paper only so how is this profile fit in whenh using Lightroom and the export function?

I found a Costco plugin for Lightroom 3 but it doesn't explain anything about the Noritsu profile stuff?

Help?

Lightroom does not have the Soft Proof capability that Photoshop has so will be of no use unless your print lab specifies that you eport an image with the specific printer/paper profile, which occasionally happens but is not normal.

A good approach is to have a set of small prints made to see if the output matches reasonably well to your needs.

I think I found my answer don't you just select the pic then go to print module then instead of doing a print you select "Print to : Jpeg File"

Then select say 300 ppi, select Glossy and then the icc profile from costco then upload that file to costco and select a 12x18 or whatever on their website.

Also does the print to file photo size have to match the size on Costco, in other words if I have a 8x10 selected can I select a larger size at Costco say a 12x18 without a problem?

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Think about what you are suggesting: if you save a file that is cropped to an 8x10, your dimensions will be cut short at the longer dimension and will produce a cropped 12x18 (with white at the ends). If you don't crop an image from the origianl aspect ratio you can get a 12x18 or 8x12 but not an 8x10.

So like you are suggesting then if I want a 12x18 at costco then it must be a 12x18 in the print module in LR?

picworx wrote in post #11487098
So like you are suggesting then if I want a 12x18 at costco then it must be a 12x18 in the print module in LR?

Yes.
You could probably get away with using the 12X18 jpg to print a 8X12, though.

I use my local Costco in Burlington, ON for proofs and the occasional print I need ASAP. I use LR3, edit on a calibrated monitor, crop to aspect ratio of print being ordered then "export" using the specific Costco printer profile along with appropriate output sharpening.

The resulting jpg is much flatter looking on my monitor, appearing quite a bit less constrasty. I select for Costco to not adjust obviously and the prints I've gotten back are extremely close to my monitor.

The only time I print from the print module is if I'm putting print packages together for sport leagues T&I and those get sent to a lab. I can't comment on how using the profile in the print module would work but I'd expect the same end result as exporting with the profile, just neve had the need to try it.

Using Print to File is unnecessary, overly complicated and easy to make mistakes, and of lower quality at low resolutions. Use it for cases where you want to incorporate a custom border or frame into the image or for multi-photo layouts, but for simple borderless prints use Export. You can convert to the printer space if the profile is in your OS's Color folder by opening the Color Space menu on the Export page and selecting Other. Then find the desired space in the list that opens.

guys... on a related note, if i'm printing to Jpeg in print module, what do I set the "Page Setup" as?

say i'm printing a 10x13, since i'm printing to jpeg, i'm not sure what to set the printer's "page setup" media since i'm not really using a printer locally. if i just select the nearest one, like 11x17, the "print to jpeg" results in a larger file than it should be..

datadump wrote in post #11489791
guys... on a related note, if i'm printing to Jpeg in print module, what do I set the "Page Setup" as?

say i'm printing a 10x13, since i'm printing to jpeg, i'm not sure what to set the printer's "page setup" media since i'm not really using a printer locally. if i just select the nearest one, like 11x17, the "print to jpeg" results in a larger file than it should be..

ok answering my own question here... theres a "Custom file dimensions" checkbox that appears under the "print to: Jpeg file" section. once you set that to your image aspect ratio... then go back to "Cell size" and adjust to maximums... margins should be zero'd out too so you get max size

one more thing........ question: costco doesnt print 10x13 dimension paper (of course). so if i set the image file dimension to 11x14 (which costco has), and make the cell 10x13, then i assume they'll take the file as is and print it -- they wont do any more cropping .. ? and when i get the prints, i can cut the sheet edges myself.. ?

datadump wrote in post #11489867
one more thing........ question: costco doesnt print 10x13 dimension paper (of course). so if i set the image file dimension to 11x14 (which they have), and make the cell 10x13, then i assume they'll take the file as is and print it -- they wont do any more cropping .. ? and when i get the prints, i can cut the sheet edges myself.. ?

Yes, if you make the page setup size 11x14 and the image size 10x13 by setting the margins to 0.5 all around or 1.0 on top and 0 on the bottom and the same thing with left and right. Thus you will get a jpg with those margins already in it and the lab will print it that way.

Doing an offbeat size like this justifies the use of Print to File, but for normal borderless sizes I wouldn't use it, as I wrote above. Another reason not to use it, that I forgot above, is that you get no control of jpg compression, it automatically uses minimal compression/max quality.

datadump wrote in post #11489867
one more thing........ question: costco doesnt print 10x13 dimension paper (of course). so if i set the image file dimension to 11x14 (which costco has), and make the cell 10x13, then i assume they'll take the file as is and print it -- they wont do any more cropping .. ? and when i get the prints, i can cut the sheet edges myself.. ?

That will work as long as your Costco doesn't trim. Give them a call in advance and ask the question.

I still say if you want Costco to make a print which they do on a Noritsu printer you need the icc profile for either gloss or matte and the only way to do this right is to select that profile and do a print to jpeg action as shown in the attached.

I know of no other way to include this icc profile on export in LR unless someone can tell me how to include this icc file.

The print to jpeg option is meant to be used when sending to a lab.

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Ooops I stand corrected I see the "other: option when doing an export in the color space and selected the costco icc profile,

the only question now is what type of file to send them, jpeg, tiff etc and image sizing and the options there, I want to do a 12x18