lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

He (hopefully) did not mean it that way.

You know, I've never tried printing from a file that was only Processed via ACR and open in Ps for the first time without first saving it as a PSD, JPG, or TIF file, can you print a "working" file or a RAW from Ps? I'm positive you can't with Lr. Never tried it with either, no real point to it anyway.

dynaquest1 Loc: Austin, Texas

Sorry...but you sound like my great grandmother when confronted with the option of getting a telephone. "Don't need one, don't want one...I'll have none of that!".

PGHphoto Loc: Pittsburgh, PA

Not sure what you mean by 'can't print a working file or RAW file' in Lightroom. By simply opening a RAW file and immediately going to the Print tab, you can print without saving anything. Even if you make an adjustment, go right to the print tab and print !

Why do you think you have to save something ?

sodapop Loc: Bel Air, MD

I think the point is that you cannot print a raw file, the print module will convert it to a jpg before it is printed

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Raw is pure image data (it is not an image), which you can manipulate in a raw editor. The image you see in a raw editor is a display of that data by the editor so you can work with it. When you print it from the raw editor, it is converted for printing.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

The LR conversion is a bitmap, at 16 bits per pixel, uncompressed, in your choice of (hopefully a wide gamut) working ICC color space.

You can export JPEGs, but when the source you print from is a raw file, it's converted to a bitmap and passed on to the printer driver with no changes. The printer driver turns it into whatever it needs to print.

This is the way very high end pigmented inkjet prints are made.

chevman Loc: Matthews, North Carolina

👍🏻👍🏻👌Right on burk photo! I don't know why someone would rather have 256 levels per color channel (jpeg) when they could have 4,000 levels of usable editable data to work with instead (RAW)??

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

Nope, but look how the subsequent UHH'er answered it. The printer has to have some file format it can "read". Printers don't read or understand RAW. I use Photoshop CS6 so all the Lightroom Export and Module references are lost on me. Note the OP never stated what PP they were using. So I was sort of asking (not a previous post of mine also here) can you print from a Raw file. I've never tried it. Per a few replies, perhaps as Ps and Lr automatically create some print format when asked to print, if that is what they are saying. I guess that might answer my rhetorical inquiry. Why would any one want to print a Raw file that is not sharpened and adjusted, etc. anyway?

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

I even sometimes work in 32-bit. Huge TIFF or PSD or PSB files!

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

When you have a raw file, it is analogous to working with exposed, undeveloped film. It must be developed into a bitmap before it can be printed, just as the latent image on film must be developed into a negative.

A bitmap is an array of RGB pixel values. To save it, metadata (data *about* data, or how to interpret it) is added, and the result is stored in one of dozens of different file formats (usually .psd, .tif, .jpg...).

BUT, before that bitmap is saved into a file (exported), it can be sent to a printer driver.

When we say we "print a raw image," we really mean we are "printing an on-the-fly bitmap conversion of it." This allows immediate feedback, review, RE-CONVERSION, adjustment, reprinting...

So, the difference is that a raw image can be RE-developed infinitely into a gazillion variations. Film is developed once.

Time, temperature, agitation, and choice of developer affect the permanent potential of a negative. But a raw file can be developed over and over, in different "developers" (software applications), to subtly change what's in the bitmap. The raw data NEVER changes.

The power of this is that you never lose the ability to change your mind about how the image should look.

You CAN store a 16-bit TIFF file of an adjusted image without losing anything in the conversion, but once you do that, you lose the ability to redevelop the image in the way you can redevelop raw files. A raw conversion allows the purest image adjustments possible.

That's why we "print from raw."

How big a deal is this? It depends. Are you selling a $20,000 celebrity portrait, or printing a 60" x 40" landscape for a MOMA exhibition? Or just a snapshot of a funny face at a kid's birthday party? I would print the first two from raw, and the party pix from JPEGs.

crazydaddio Loc: Toronto Ontario Canada

When you say "print from RAW" do you mean develop the RAW in LR/ACR and then create the JPEG and print that (vs printing the JPEG from the camera or printing tweaked JPEG camera file) ?

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

No. There is no JPEG or other secondary file involved at all. The converted bitmap in computer memory is sent directly from LR to an attached printer.

Raw file -> LR/ACR adjustment, crop, etc. -> Printer

Of course, intermediate color conversions are happening in that process:

Raw to 16-bit bitmap in wide gamut working color space (such as ProPhoto RGB)

16-bit bitmap in working color space to 8-bit bitmap in custom monitor color space profile

16-bit bitmap in working color space to 8- or 16-bit bitmap in custom or generic printer/ink/paper color space profile

PGHphoto Loc: Pittsburgh, PA

I think you miss the point - if you are talking a print file, that is different from a RAW or jpeg file and has to do with the instructions needed to make the printer do what you want it to do. From a technical perspective, we refer to this as an interface file and it typically does not get saved unless you save the print queue files after printing. When you 'print from a jpeg' or 'print from a raw' file, what is sent to the printer is not that much different but it is driver dependent, not dependent on the original file. If you edited from a RAW file in lightroom and printed the result then saved the edits as a highest quality jpeg, reopened the jpeg and printed it there would be no difference because the unprinted data is what gets ignored when saving as a jpeg. The compression of a jpeg ignores data that is not needed for the current appearance of the picture.

Another way to look at it is that for a given area that appears to be 'black' in a RAW file photo, there is usually additional detail behind the area that could be revealed if you were to increase the exposure value in lightroom. As long as you tell Lightroom that you want it to 'look' black, the jpeg file that you save does not include the detail that is available. So, when you open a jpeg file or the original RAW file with its edits, the printer commands are the same - 'make the area black' . Some printer drivers will fine tune what 'black' is but printed on the same printer the two files will result in the same printed photo appearance. Only the ability to edit the area and get additional detail is affected.

The only caveat is that if you save at a higher compression (or smaller files size) you WILL affect the print because more than just the background data is removed. That though is a function of your quality selection, not the jpeg itself.

Try it on your own printer and you will see the prints are the same.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

If you are working in a *high end lab* or service bureau with a high-end Epson or Canon inkjet printer using eight or more pigmented inks, you have a device with a 16-bit compatible driver. If you are converting and adjusting a raw file in Lightroom, using a wide-gamut color space, you have a much greater range of tonal gradation than can be stored in an 8-bit, sRGB JPEG. A 16-bit printer driver can print many more subtle gradations than an 8-bit driver. It converts the photo from a wide gamut ICC color space directly to the color space profile for the exact paper, ink, and printer combination in use. The result is a print with much finer tonal gradation than you can see in a print made with an 8-bit driver, from an 8-bit JPEG.

Top ad agencies, art museums, and pro photographers with high end clients use this process. It preserves as much of the tonality as is possible to print on paper. If your business is to reproduce CocaCola Red, rather than Corvette Red, you need a workflow like this.

If you export an adjusted raw file as 16-bit TIFF, it will print exactly the same way as in the scenario I just mentioned. The TIFF contains the adjusted bitmap image in a file wrapper, along with assorted metadata. HOWEVER, you have limited yourself to the selection of tones stored in the TIFF. There is still more information in the raw file, that can be extracted and printed, or extracted and exported to a different TIFF.

What separates traditional photo labs from high end service bureaus is the technology and precision applied. Conventional photo labs like the one I spent half my life in will accept only 8-bit JPEG files in the sRGB color space, and print them to RGB devices on silver halide paper. Those devices have three color channels. The photo paper they use has a gamut about the same size as sRGB, only a little different. There are some colors in sRGB that the paper can't reproduce, and some colors the paper can reproduce that sRGB cannot contain.

When I ran the digital departments at Herff Jones Photography Division (now part of Lifetouch), we had 15 Noritsu mini-labs. We also used an Epson for prints up to 44x96 inches. The Epson had a MUCH wider color gamut than the Noritsus, so we had to "dumb it down" with simulation profiles to make it look like the Noritsus. Otherwise, if we had an order for large format prints and small format prints mixed together, the Epson prints would make the Noritsu prints look bad! And that was from 8-bit JPEGs. When we received a 16-bit TIFF in a wide-gamut color space, for a large Epson print and some Noritsu prints (12x18 and smaller), they would not match unless we converted the TIFF to an 8-bit sRGB JPEG to make both prints. But if we printed the entire order on the Epson, from the 16-bit TIFF, converting color spaces on the fly, it was very noticeably better than anything else we could deliver.

rehess Loc: South Bend, Indiana, USA

800 to the bride! That is slightly fewer than what I take in a year, including the year my sister-in-law asked me to be the photographer at her wedding. No wonder weddings are said to be so expensive these days.