# how to print a print's filename to a label?



## JMTB (Jan 7, 2015)

Goodday everyone, Victoria!

It seems strange that I cannot find this question anywhere on the internet or on the forum, although it may be a language matter (print being a verb as well as a noun). I can't imagine I am the only one struggling with this problem.

I sometimes make prints for other people on my Epson 3880. In order for them (or me for that matter) to later see under which filename the digital picture is archived I now have to remember to write that on the back of the print with a special marker. Not very neat, certainly not in my handwriting, and a source of confusion when printing series. Integrating any text in the actual photoprinting is no option, it should be there but only on the back side.

So: why not use a second printer, preferable a label printer like a labelwriter? Unfortunately most of the latter cannot be used directly from Lightroom or Photoshop, which leads me to the question:
 does anybody know of a way to automate this process?

Michael.


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## clee01l (Jan 7, 2015)

Welcome to the forum.  Reserve a little strip along the bottom of the photo paper and let LR print the file name there.  Just check the checkbox labeled "Photo Info" and choose "Filename" from the list of Info items or create a custom string for the available tokens. Set the font size to 6 and the printed area is the minimum.   If I mount the image, the Filename Area gets covered by the matte.


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## JMTB (Jan 7, 2015)

clee01l said:


> Welcome to the forum.  Reserve a little strip along the bottom of the photo paper and let LR print the file name there.  Just check the checkbox labeled "Photo Info" and choose "Filename" from the list of Info items or create a custom string for the available tokens. Set the font size to 6 and the printed area is the minimum.   If I mount the image, the Filename Area gets covered by the matte.



Thanks for the reply but...
Sorry, I specifically added that this is no option because it isn't. Most people want borderless prints and so do I. Never use mattes.


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## Victoria Bampton (Jan 9, 2015)

Hi Michael, welcome to the forum!

So the short answer is no, LR can't print on the back of the print!


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## JMTB (Jan 9, 2015)

Victoria Bampton said:


> Hi Michael, welcome to the forum!
> 
> So the short answer is no, LR can't print on the back of the print!



I'm sorry to say this, and of course I appreciate replies, but things would be so much easier if what I wrote was actually read. Of course printing on the back of a print is not possible, with any software, which is why I thought of a label via a second printer.......


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## Victoria Bampton (Jan 10, 2015)

My apologies, it's been a long week and I misread.  So what part of creating a label using a second printer are you having trouble automating? You could export a list of the files you're going to print to a CSV file and use Microsoft Word to mail merge it.  Is that the kind of thing you have in mind?  There isn't a way of doing it within LR.


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## Anthony.Ralph (Jan 10, 2015)

JMTB said:


> [..]
> 
> So: why not use a second printer, preferable a label printer like a ..
> 
> Michael.



1. You can print on the back of prints - why would you think otherwise?
2. List the file names and create a Word mailmerge document.
3. Print.
4. Using labels can create nasty glue marks on the print which are visible on the front surface in time.

Anthony.


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## JMTB (Jan 15, 2015)

Anthony.Ralph said:


> 1. You can print on the back of prints - why would you think otherwise?
> 2. List the file names and create a Word mailmerge document.
> 3. Print.
> 4. Using labels can create nasty glue marks on the print which are visible on the front surface in time.
> ...



It seems I did not make myself clear.

The problem I'm trying to solve is this: somebody walks in, refers to one or more pictures I took at some point and he asks me for a print (by which I mean: on true photopaper).
 Best practice would of course be to always (!) write the filename of the picture and/or printing details (paper/icc/sharpening etc.) on  the back of the (photo!) paper, just in case - it happens - people like my work and want another print. Or in case someone later calls me and asks where and when the pictgure was taken/ how it was processed, whatever.
If only..... Alas, I often forget to do the right thing, and so I sometimes get into trouble later on.
Sound familiar to anyone?

I have always wondered why Photoshop does not allow for keeping records of making prints like it does in History when editing a picture. Since Lightroom is here, you can at least some of the relevant information after printing, but you cannot see that information, let alone print it.
So this is how I came to wonder whether there exists any kind of plugin (PS or LR) to facilitate all this.

Using labels would probably be the best solution, because its fast, accurate, legible (..) and secure. Printing on the back of photopaper is no option, as smudging all too easily happens, may ruin other pictures and render the information unreadable, not to mention the damage to the photo side of the print when it has to travel throught the printer a second time.
So... a second printer, preferably a label printer. WSord, mailmerge etc, all takes far too much time and effort, and will at least in my case lead to more errors.

One more consideration: we do not use negatives anymore, so the true source of a (digital) image is easier lost than ever, because one will never "stumble" upon it, as we sometime do on the shoe box in grandma's attic.

Well, better luck this time, I hope.
Thank you reading.


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## clee01l (Jan 16, 2015)

As I and others have tried to stress, you can not do this in LR alone.   I have a sheet fed printer.  I reserve about 1/8" along the bottom and borderless on the other three sides LR prints the file name on the same side .  That is not what you want.  My Photo printer also prints text.  Insert the photo sheet upside down and print text on the back with the text printer of your choice.  Then print the image on the front. And as long as you are only printing one image, you won't get confused with image names mismatching images.   What you are asking for is not a big demand item or Adobe would have added that functionality long ago to LR or Photoshop.  You can also search every other photo software package and not find this feature.


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## JMTB (Jan 27, 2015)

clee01l said:


> As I and others have tried to stress, you can not do this in LR alone.   I have a sheet fed printer.  I reserve about 1/8" along the bottom and borderless on the other three sides LR prints the file name on the same side .  That is not what you want.  My Photo printer also prints text.  Insert the photo sheet upside down and print text on the back with the text printer of your choice.  Then print the image on the front. And as long as you are only printing one image, you won't get confused with image names mismatching images.   What you are asking for is not a big demand item or Adobe would have added that functionality long ago to LR or Photoshop.  You can also search every other photo software package and not find this feature.



How very, very regretable.
First of all I fail to see the use of people repeating themselves and others, ignoring (in this case my) specific remarks (e.g. smudging), getting beside the point (I never said I wanted printing via LR, let alone, alone) while it should already be clear that the poster is thinking along different lines.
Second, much worse, is that this sort of replies seems to greatly diminish the chance that a new, different reply is posted. The forum software probably marks the topic as "closed" or "well dealt with".
But is isn't.
How regretable.


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## Victoria Bampton (Jan 27, 2015)

Michael, what are you looking for us to tell you?  This is a Lightroom forum, so looking for a solution or workaround using Lightroom is a natural response.  

You don't want to print on the front of the print as it needs to be borderless.  You don't want to print on the back of the print because of potential damage. You don't want to manually write on the back of the print because you forget.  And printing labels "takes far too much time and effort".  

So help us understand, what would you expect your dream plug-in to do for you?  Even if it could record the filename and print settings using for a specific print, how would you imagine they get onto the print, having ruled out printing on the front or back of the print and also creating labels? 

Let me hazard a guess.  You want Lightroom to automatically write the filename and print settings to a separate label printer at the same time as making a print?  Have I understood that correctly?  If so, no there isn't a plug-in and there's very little chance of a plug-in being able to do that in the foreseeable future.  You could put in a request at the Official Feature Request/Bug Report Forum but I'd be surprised if it reached the top of the pile anytime this decade.

The topics remain open almost indefinitely, but I'm not sure what kind of solution you're expecting someone to post.  You've already ruled out the logical answers.


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## JMTB (Jan 27, 2015)

Victoria Bampton said:


> Michael, what are you looking for us to tell you?  This is a Lightroom forum, so looking for a solution or workaround using Lightroom is a natural response.
> 
> You don't want to print on the front of the print as it needs to be borderless.  You don't want to print on the back of the print because of potential damage. You don't want to manually write on the back of the print because you forget.  And printing labels "takes far too much time and effort".
> 
> ...



Dear Lady,

Ever been to a blood laboratory in a hospital? Check out how many printers/scanners are operated there based on the same dataset from the same computer?
Postoffice? Shipping department? Labels, bills of lading, worksheet, billings, wow, all based on your single web order for a book or as dress, spit out by several devices all at the same time.
Airports, Luggage check-in?
Remember the old days, ordering prints in a store? Indeed, on the back of them, obviously printed with a different printer (matrix?) we would find the date, and the negative number.
I don't mind you calling yourself queen, but I fail to see how that is ground for this tone of reply, implicating that my issue and arguments are those of some unearthly fool.
Overlooking the sheer jungle of (silly?) plugins and add-ons for many great software applications (I mentionned two) I am amazed that you have seen fit to use your considerable influence
 in this field to make sure that after this thread nobody in his right mind would ever consider putting time and effort in a solution that you have - indeed - understood very well.

As I said, how regretable.


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## Victoria Bampton (Jan 28, 2015)

Michael, LR Queen is just a nickname I was given on people on forums years ago, which seems to have stuck and is more memorable than my name.  If you stick around, you'll find I have no delusions of grandeur.

You seem to be reading something into this thread that just isn't there.  No one's calling you a fool.  People are freely giving of their time to try to understand what you're aiming for and provide workarounds and solutions for you.  

So ok, I was on the right wavelength, that you do want LR to get a second printer to automatically spit out those details.

I'm not saying that no one should spend time creating a plug-in to solve this - but this isn't something the SDK is capable of doing (AFAIK - I'd be pleased if a developer drops in and corrects me), so the most willing plug-in developer won't be able to do it.  I've already suggested that you put in an official request so it can be considered by the engineering team themselves, but based on experience, I don't want to give you false hope on that route.

If there's any chance of something along those lines being hacked together in an unconventional way, possibly by integrating with other software, Rob Cole is your man.  Here's his website: http://www.robcole.com  Let us know what he says.


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## John Trax (Aug 6, 2017)

Periodically I ask the same question and an internet search always brings up this thread.  Pity it went sideways, but that happens.
At any rate I have much the same requirement as the OP:  When I make a print I currently hand write a label for the back that includes the title, file number, my name and website.  I then fix this on the back of the print, mat or frame back depending.  But my handwriting is sloppy, I sometimes forget something and honestly it looks unprofessional.  When I go to a show and someone is looking through my print bin I want the print names on the back of the mats to all look good, be legible and professional.

What I would like would be the ability to print on a label, from a Labelwriter machine for example, the information I want at the time of printing.  No it would not be automatic, I want to print the print to my photo printer then print the label to the label printer.  Seems simple enough and with label software open I can hand type it in and print, but it would be so much easier if there was a way to do this from Lightroom (unlikely) or from some plugin.  Like the OP I am astounded that others have not requested something that seems so useful to me.  The current label I use has my logo, website, and space for me to write the title and number.

If anyone has any thoughts or ideas I would appreciate it.


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## clee01l (Aug 7, 2017)

John Trax said:


> Periodically I ask the same question and an internet search always brings up this thread.


Welcome to the forum.   This thread remains the definitive answer.  This is not something that can be done in LR and probably will never be added to the requirements.  Your choices are to print a label using other software either before or after you use the LR print module or to print the information that you want somewhere in the margin as I previously suggested. 

You can probably add a feature request in the Adobe LR forum, but I would not expect there to be enough demand for this to get it included in a future LR update.


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## John Trax (Aug 7, 2017)

Ok, I was more determined today than in the past and I found at least a crude answer to this.  Yes, it is possible to print a back of print label from Lightroom.
Here's how:
1) Set up your label printer, I used an old Dymo 450 I found at the office that was no longer used.
2) Determine your labels, I used 1 2/5 x 3 1/2 because they were in the printer, but that is close to what I wanted anyway.  Easy to change later.
3) In Lightroom select a picture and then go to the print module and click page setup, select your label printer and labels.  This is why you need to set those up first.
4) Turn on "Photo Info" under the page tab.  I set mine to "Title" but there is other information available if wanted
5) Define a cell that covers the entire label.  This should show the "Title" at the bottom on white and part of the image above.
6) Guestimate how big the area that is actual image pixels is.  For mine 1.4 x 3.5 worked even though the math does not quite work
7) In Photoshop create an image with a white canvas of that size
8) Put your constant information on this.  I used my logo, website, copyright declaration and a signature.  I also put a black bar about 1/4" up from the bottom to help define the Title text later
9) Save and then export as a jpeg.  Save as a PSD because it is likely you will have to adjust things several times to get it right.
10) Back in Lightroom select Identity Plate under the page tab.  Select Edit and then in the pop up select "Use a graphical identity plate".  
11) Click "Locate File..." and find the jpeg you saved earlier
12) Adjust the location of the identity plate to cover the image part of the picture leaving only the Title on white part exposed.  This might take several iterations in Photoshop before it all lines up.
13) Print to test and when done save as a user template

Now you can select an image, go to the print module select your template for size, paper and printer and make your print as normal.  Then select the label template (I called mine "Print Labels" and print again.  This time you should get a label on your Dymo labelwriter.
Sadly the label is crude and you cannot even adjust the font size, but it does work and is the best solution I have found after years of intermittent searching.


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## Gnits (Aug 7, 2017)

There is a much simpler way. I apologise in advance for large screen dumps... I do not have time to make them smaller.

Step 1 . Set up a Slideshow template with the metadata that you want. I used Creator, Title, Filename and  Extension.
             You only have to do this setup once. Click the Slide Preview button and turn off the option to show guides, to get a clean uncluttered metadata set.



Step 2. Start your Dymo app and *use the option to do a screen grab*.  Decide if you want text only or image / text combo. Grab what you want to print.

This is what my Dymo app looks like now.




Step 3. Print using Dymo.

QED.

If you are not familiar with setting up custom text in the slideshow module then you will find the following video superb ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tY9R4cGik0

The advantage is that if you have the image visible in Lr print module, selecting the Slideshow module will have the same image (and relevant metadata present.

You are limited only by your imagination on what you want to include.

It may be possible to improve on this .... but this is fairly quick and efficient.

If I was doing this regularly I would probably use a javascript to automate.  You could also have an action in Photoshop that will present the info the way you want, with a document the size you want and print directly to your Dymo printer.

[Ps..My usual gripe related to this is that Adobe did a superb job of allowing metadata onto the Slideshow module, but failed to use the same features on the Print module... where they would provide real benefits (including ... avoiding return trips to Photoshop and third party applications)].


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## Gnits (Aug 7, 2017)

You could also use the Identity Plate feature to do some of the layout.... but I think the Custom Text in the Slideshow is more flexible.


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## John Trax (Aug 7, 2017)

Thanks Gnits, really appreciate the response.  Funny that after two years of "you cannot do that" we now have two different ways to do it.  Neither is exactly elegant but they serve the purpose.

I think my method is simpler in use, no screen grabs or external software needed, just print.  But your method seems to be more flexible especially if you can adjust the font size there.  And it appears there is more flexibility in where the metadata can be placed, and an image can be included.  For my purpose the title is all I need but if more data is required your solution might be better.

Anyway hopefully this information will be of use to others since we now have at least some sort of solution, even two!


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## Gnits (Aug 7, 2017)

You should be able to download the Dymo printing software, which will make printing the labels easier.  The Dymo software has a built in feature to grab the info you want from Lr. Then just hit the print button.

You can also use a plug-in to create a  csv of the metadata from a bunch of images to be printed and use the Dymo Import option to layout and print the labels. You can standardise this Dymo import template for repeated use.


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## clee01l (Aug 7, 2017)

Gnits said:


> Step 2. Start your Dymo app and *use the option to do a screen grab*.  Decide if you want text only or image / text combo. Grab what you want to print..


I think this is an excellent LR solution. I especially like the included thumbnail as it can be a challenge to match labels and image prints after the fact.   It remains to be seen as to whether it is more efficient to print labels inside or outside of LR.


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## John Trax (Aug 7, 2017)

Gnits said:


> You should be able to download the Dymo printing software, which will make printing the labels easier. The Dymo software has a built in feature to grab the info you want from Lr. Then just hit the print button.
> 
> You can also use a plug-in to create a csv of the metadata from a bunch of images to be printed and use the Dymo Import option to layout and print the labels. You can standardise this Dymo import template for repeated use.


I am sure I could and if I was doing this in a batch form that might make sense.  And having an image on the label might be nice.  But for my workflow screen grabs and external software just waste time.  And images do not print well on the Dymo printer, at least the older one I have so the thumbnails are not a good option for me.  When I get an order I want to make the print to the photo printer and then print a label to the label printer.  I then mat the print and put the label on the back of the mat.  Simple and done without all the complicated run around.
But it is great we now have two options for this!!


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