Printing WITHOUT Lightroom Classic?

[SirBlunder]

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Hi All -- Recently revamped my workflow into the new cloud-based Lightroom from the old Lightroom Classic that I had been using for years. 

Figured switching camera systems (from Sony to Leica) would be a good time to switch software, and the newer workflow (of cloud storage, always having access to all my photos, etc.) is honestly a nice improvement. I'm NOT a professional, so I'm not sure I need to use Classic now that there's a solid alternative, and that cloud storage isn't insanely expensive. (Currently paying $10 USD or so for 1 TB.)

THAT SAID, I love printing at home from my Canon Pixma Pro-100, and the new Lightroom... does not have a print module. And searching online or YouTube for suggestions/advice is difficult because of Adobe's (frankly ridiculously stupid) naming convention for the two different programs.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Honestly, it's extremely frustrating that the new LR does not have any accommodation for printing. Is there a good 3rd party software I should get? Would prefer not to have to upload to LR Classic just to print. Seems like that'd be.. going backwards. 

Thanks.

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[Dennis]

Talking about LR CC, I tried it for a while as a primary option, and it didn't work. I don't need (and use) all the LrC features, but LR CC is very limited. I also switched from a 1TB plan to 20GB + Photoshop, and it's perfect. There is a way to sync all your LrC photos into your cloud, using smart preview only and w/o using any cloud space. 
You're not a PRO, but if you want to print and still edit on your LR ecosystem devices and keep everything updated, it's possible. But the system needs LrC as your main catalog.  

[frame-it]

1 hour ago, SirBlunder said:

Hi All -- Recently revamped my workflow into the new cloud-based Lightroom from the old Lightroom Classic that I had been using for years. 

Figured switching camera systems (from Sony to Leica) would be a good time to switch software, and the newer workflow (of cloud storage, always having access to all my photos, etc.) is honestly a nice improvement. I'm NOT a professional, so I'm not sure I need to use Classic now that there's a solid alternative, and that cloud storage isn't insanely expensive. (Currently paying $10 USD or so for 1 TB.)

THAT SAID, I love printing at home from my Canon Pixma Pro-100, and the new Lightroom... does not have a print module. And searching online or YouTube for suggestions/advice is difficult because of Adobe's (frankly ridiculously stupid) naming convention for the two different programs.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Honestly, it's extremely frustrating that the new LR does not have any accommodation for printing. Is there a good 3rd party software I should get? Would prefer not to have to upload to LR Classic just to print. Seems like that'd be.. going backwards. 

Thanks.

i think your answer is here

 

[LocalHero1953]

You have discovered one of the many major problems with LR CC. Like @Dennis I tried hard to adapt to it and in the end decided it was far too limited for normal file management, editing and just actually doing something with the images, including printing. Since I have it in my subscription, I only use it now for ingesting photos on my laptop while travelling, ready for transfer to LR Classic when I get home. LR CC has had very little development since it was launched - I suspect just those editing tools that can be copied from LR Classic without too much effort.

[LocalHero1953]

Mods: can the two threads be merged?

[Guest]

I know you said WITHOUT Lightroom Classic, but with the $20 Photography Plan you get Lightroom Classic, which you know and love (?) and Photoshop, plus the Cloud storage etc. benefits. I know it’s double your monthly outgoing but it does what you need. More info.

The cloud version of Lightroom is a different product built for consumers who use their phones and tablets to edit images and not necessarily print them, it even uses “consumer friendly” Albums and Folders instead of Collection Sets and Collections. The recommendation is to email the images to a print lab, or more lucratively to Adobe.

Edited August 2, 2022 by OThomas

[SirBlunder]

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37 minutes ago, LocalHero1953 said:

You have discovered one of the many major problems with LR CC. Like @Dennis I tried hard to adapt to it and in the end decided it was far too limited for normal file management, editing and just actually doing something with the images, including printing. Since I have it in my subscription, I only use it now for ingesting photos on my laptop while travelling, ready for transfer to LR Classic when I get home. LR CC has had very little development since it was launched - I suspect just those editing tools that can be copied from LR Classic without too much effort.

Interesting.. maybe I should be sticking with LRC after all. If you don’t mind, how’re you transferring over to LRC from LR after a trip? That’s basically what I’d need to do now. 

37 minutes ago, LocalHero1953 said:

Mods: can the two threads be merged?

Sorry. I originally thought it would be out of place in the Q forum (which is where all my other posting has been since signing up recently) but then decided some of the (very) helpful people I’ve heard from probably wouldn’t see my post over there. 

[Guest]

7 hours ago, SirBlunder said:

and that cloud storage isn't insanely expensive. (Currently paying $10 USD or so for 1 TB.)

$10 for 1 TB is expensive, I know you’re getting Lightroom too, but you can get cloud storage cheaper and more of it.  You don’t say if you’re Windows or Apple user, so have linked DROPBOX pricing for your info. Incidentally Apple charge £6.99/month for 2 TB, which is what I’m using. 

Edited August 2, 2022 by OThomas

[SirBlunder]

2 hours ago, OThomas said:

$10 for 1 TB is expensive, I know you’re getting Lightroom too, but you can get cloud storage cheaper and more of it.  You don’t say if you’re Windows or Apple user, so have linked DROPBOX pricing for your info. Incidentally Apple charge £6.99/month for 2 TB, which is what I’m using. 

Fair point -- I guess what I was trying to point out was that $10/month for the 1TB plus use of LR seems like decent value.

I use both Mac and PC. I use Apple and Google storage for private/professional use. 

[Guest]

@SirBlunder personally I use the £10 Photography Plan with 2 TB of iCloud storage. 

24 minutes ago, SirBlunder said:

 I guess what I was trying to point out was that $10/month for the 1TB plus use of LR seems like decent value.

It is a reasonable value, but not necessarily a good value, as you loose the full functionality of Lightroom, as you have experienced. 

[LocalHero1953]

4 hours ago, SirBlunder said:

Interesting.. maybe I should be sticking with LRC after all. If you don’t mind, how’re you transferring over to LRC from LR after a trip? That’s basically what I’d need to do now. 

I import my images into LR CC on my laptop, then create a collection from them. If I'm on a good wifi connection, then I will allow that collection to sync to the Adobe cloud. Meanwhile I can do some editing in LR CC, post on social media etc. When I get home, I start up LR Classic on my desktop, where I store all my images and do most of my editing. That collection will now be visible in LR Classic, and I can drag the images from the collection to where I keep all my images on my local had disk. I can then delete the collection, and any images that remain in LR CC on my laptop.

If my wifi while travelling has limited capacity, then I will not permit syncing to the cloud while I'm travelling, but wait till I get home. That is the case more often than not!

I pay for the Adobe Photographers' package of LR Classic, Photoshop and LR CC, but only have the basic 20Gb or so of cloud storage. This is enough for simple transfer of images in the way I describe using the cloud, and I think I'm paying the same as you. I back up locally on an external drive, and also online using a dedicated backup service: Backblaze.

I used to do the same as you and pay for 2Tb Adobe cloud storage, but in the end I found LR CC far too limited and undeveloped for practical use, and I could manage storage and backup better and cheaper outside the Adobe cloud. 

There is a real benefit to using the Adobe Cloud: I do quite a bit of portrait photography, and photography of drama and performance groups. I share collections online with the people I have photographed using Adobe CC, allowing them to download them as jpgs. I can do that within the 20Tb 'free' storage (in fact I'm not sure if sharing collections online counts towards that storage). I also use Adobe Spark for sharing photos with a customised layout and sequencing.

But in your shoes, for the same money, I would rather have LR Classic than 1Tb Adobe cloud storage!

[jaapv]

13 hours ago, SirBlunder said:

Would prefer not to have to upload to LR Classic just to print.

Why?  LR Classic and LR are two different things  LR Classic is for editing and printing, Lightroom is for editing and Internet connectivity. To get the best from both, you need to switch. For instance when traveling I like to upload some photos into Lightroom on my phone through WiFi, edit them a bit for social media, come home, find them in Lightroom, edit some more - or not- and get them into LR Classic (in my case Photoshop) if I want to do some extensive editing and printing.  It is not for nothing that Adobe offers this suite - it is all about connectivity and workflow. They should not have called everything "Lightroom" It confuses people.  There is also Photoshop Camera, Photoshop Express and Photoshop Fix on your phone with similar divisions.

[charlesphoto99]

13 hours ago, SirBlunder said:

THAT SAID, I love printing at home from my Canon Pixma Pro-100

You could export tifs from LR CC, and then print using the Canon software (i think it's called Professional Print & Layout) which is stand alone app or can be PS plug-in. One doesn't have to be stuck in the LR ecosystem for printing (in fact I find their printing module quite confusing). 

I personally use LrC, but do all of my printing via the Canon Photoshop Plug-in to my ipf6400. Alas, the plug in hasn't been updated in awhile, so still stuck on Photoshop early 2021. 

[LocalHero1953]

1 hour ago, jaapv said:

LR Classic is for editing and printing, Lightroom is for editing and Internet connectivity.

Sadly LR CC has more limited editing than in LR Classic. For example, you can only use PS as an external editor, not Nik, Topaz....... There is no editing 'history' to make it easy to undo actions. The interface is unfriendly as well. Instead of grouping the frequently used editing tools in a 'Basic' window, they are organised by a logical but impractical structure (e.g. white balance and saturation are placed under 'Color', clarity comes under 'Effects'). 

LR CC does not properly manage your original files. It has one bucket into which it puts them all. If you want to organise them, you have to use Albums (LR CC bizarrely uses a different term for what LR Classic calls Collections). And, of course, that means that you can have multiple copies of the same image in different Albums. If you want to delete it, you have to find it in the unstructured 'bucket' where LR CC keeps all your files. Deleting it from an Album does not get rid of it.

/rant end/

[jaapv]

I don't know about NIK, but this is the way to install the Topaz LR plugin in LR Classic: https://support.topazlabs.com/article/54-how-to-install-your-topaz-labs-program-into-lightroom-classic

This is exactly what I was saying, LR CC is the communication-oriented section and should be used in conjunction with LR Classic.

[LocalHero1953]

1 minute ago, jaapv said:

I don't know about NIK, but this is the way to install the Topaz LR plugin in LR Classic: https://support.topazlabs.com/article/54-how-to-install-your-topaz-labs-program-into-lightroom-classic

This is exactly what I was saying, LR CC is the communication-oriented section and should be used in conjunction with LR Classic.

It's LR CC that cannot use Nik, Topaz etc, only PS. I use all of them with LR Classic.

[jaapv]

TBH, I almost never use LR Classic, I disliked Lightroom from the beginning. Photoshop is my comfort zone.

[SirBlunder]

11 hours ago, LocalHero1953 said:

I import my images into LR CC on my laptop, then create a collection from them. If I'm on a good wifi connection, then I will allow that collection to sync to the Adobe cloud. Meanwhile I can do some editing in LR CC, post on social media etc. When I get home, I start up LR Classic on my desktop, where I store all my images and do most of my editing. That collection will now be visible in LR Classic, and I can drag the images from the collection to where I keep all my images on my local had disk. I can then delete the collection, and any images that remain in LR CC on my laptop.

If my wifi while travelling has limited capacity, then I will not permit syncing to the cloud while I'm travelling, but wait till I get home. That is the case more often than not!

I pay for the Adobe Photographers' package of LR Classic, Photoshop and LR CC, but only have the basic 20Gb or so of cloud storage. This is enough for simple transfer of images in the way I describe using the cloud, and I think I'm paying the same as you. I back up locally on an external drive, and also online using a dedicated backup service: Backblaze.

I used to do the same as you and pay for 2Tb Adobe cloud storage, but in the end I found LR CC far too limited and undeveloped for practical use, and I could manage storage and backup better and cheaper outside the Adobe cloud. 

There is a real benefit to using the Adobe Cloud: I do quite a bit of portrait photography, and photography of drama and performance groups. I share collections online with the people I have photographed using Adobe CC, allowing them to download them as jpgs. I can do that within the 20Tb 'free' storage (in fact I'm not sure if sharing collections online counts towards that storage). I also use Adobe Spark for sharing photos with a customised layout and sequencing.

But in your shoes, for the same money, I would rather have LR Classic than 1Tb Adobe cloud storage!

This is a great post; thanks a lot for taking the time to put your whole process in writing. There's lots of great comments here (and, in fact, this community has been EXTREMELY helpful generally).

I like the way you're doing things, and may consider adapting some of that, but I think I'm going to continue using CC at the moment. Seems to be just cleaner, and I don't love doing massive editing to my photos in post. LR CC, while obviously more limited, does a lot (except printing, lol) and I like that it's automatically synced between my two computers and iPhone. 

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[SirBlunder]

8 hours ago, LocalHero1953 said:

Sadly LR CC has more limited editing than in LR Classic. For example, you can only use PS as an external editor, not Nik, Topaz....... There is no editing 'history' to make it easy to undo actions. The interface is unfriendly as well. Instead of grouping the frequently used editing tools in a 'Basic' window, they are organised by a logical but impractical structure (e.g. white balance and saturation are placed under 'Color', clarity comes under 'Effects'). 

LR CC does not properly manage your original files. It has one bucket into which it puts them all. If you want to organise them, you have to use Albums (LR CC bizarrely uses a different term for what LR Classic calls Collections). And, of course, that means that you can have multiple copies of the same image in different Albums. If you want to delete it, you have to find it in the unstructured 'bucket' where LR CC keeps all your files. Deleting it from an Album does not get rid of it.

/rant end/

I agree, LRCC is more limited than LRC (Geez, I really hate how they've named these programs), but I never used an external editor in my years using LRC. Always had more than I needed right there, and honestly I feel like I have plenty with LRCC. I don't do a crazy amount of editing on my photos; just minor adjustments, and LRCC saves me time/effort vs. LRC. Feeling like I'll keep using it for a bit until I run into more issues than just how to print. (And honestly I never loved the LRC printing module anyway... kind of felt clunky.)

[SirBlunder]

10 hours ago, jaapv said:

Why?  LR Classic and LR are two different things  LR Classic is for editing and printing, Lightroom is for editing and Internet connectivity. To get the best from both, you need to switch. For instance when traveling I like to upload some photos into Lightroom on my phone through WiFi, edit them a bit for social media, come home, find them in Lightroom, edit some more - or not- and get them into LR Classic (in my case Photoshop) if I want to do some extensive editing and printing.  It is not for nothing that Adobe offers this suite - it is all about connectivity and workflow. They should not have called everything "Lightroom" It confuses people.  There is also Photoshop Camera, Photoshop Express and Photoshop Fix on your phone with similar divisions.

Honestly? Because I'm anal when it comes to my organization and process, and just casually dropping the occasional photo into LRC to print it seems.. disorganized. Though I'm sure it's not.

Strongly agreed re: naming; very hard to find resources online (e.g. YouTube) for Lightroom (i.e. the new one, which used to be called Lightroom CC) because almost everything is for LRC.