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Customizing Your Identity With Lightroom's Identity Plate

This Article Features Photo Zoom

When I first started using Lightroom three years ago, I thought its Identity Plate was just a way to have a fancy way of displaying my name at the top of the Lightroom window.Once I got into using the powerful Print Module, it became clear that the Identity Plate was a really cool feature that lets you add your logo or fancy type to prints, cards, posters, even slide shows.

The Identity Plate is accessed from the Edit menu by selecting Identity Plate Setup. This brings up a pop-up window where you can create either a styled text Identity Plate or use a graphical Identity Plate. Using text is straightforward—just choose your font and color like in any program. The font size is only important in regards to how it displays at the top of the Lightroom window—when printing you can resize to match your output.

Once you've created the text you like, be sure to save it by clicking on the window next to "Enable Identity Plate" and choose "Save As." A great feature is that Lightroom lets you save as many Identity Plates as you need that can be accessed at any time directly from the Print, Slideshow and Web modules.

To create a graphical Identity Plate, you'll first need to create a graphic in Photoshop or some other image editing program. Be sure to create a file that's large enough to print at the largest size you envision using it. For my logo, I use a file that's about 2x4 inches at 300 dpi, and saved as a JPEG file. Once you've created your graphic, you can load it into Lightroom by clicking on the radio button next to "Use a Graphical Identity Plate" and clicking the Locate File button. Lightroom will give you a warning that the graphic must be no more than 57 pixels tall. Ignore this message. Fifty seven pixels will give you an Identity Plate that displays correctly in the Lightroom window, but it won't be large enough to print well.

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