How to Create a "Canvas" Copy of a Photo in LR

BabaGanoush

This may be old news to most folks here, but it's new to me...something I just discovered today.

I needed to create a so-called "canvas" copy of a jpg panorama image file in order to make a large 30 inch x 20 inch print at COSTCO. The original file was 8746 x 3410 pxls. To use COSTCO's on-line Web service, I needed to submit a jpg file in one of COSTCO's standard print sizes. In this case, I had to add white space to the short dimension of my picture to increase the overall size of the canvas to 9000 x 6000 pxls, which is a standard COSTCO print size. It's easy to create a "canvas" of any arbitrary size in Photoshop, either as a standalone or as a plug-in to LR, but I was curious to see if the process could be done entirely within LR itself, without going into Photoshop.

It can be done. I discovered it's possible to do it in LR6's PRINT module by creating a custom user print template, in my case for a size of 30" x 20" (and a printer setting of 300 dpi). This allows one to generate a printable canvas of any size. To create an output JPG file for the canvas print, I used the PRINT to FILE button at the bottom of the right hand side of the PRINT module screen. This created a 9000 x 6000 pxl JPG file which was fully compatible with COSTCO's on-line software, and so I was able to pick up my processed 30" x 20" panorama print in under 2 hours. Voila!

NB: The resulting JPG file lacks nearly all of the original metadata, however, that information can be inserted in a subsequent step, i.e., you can import the canvas file back into LR and then sync its metadata with the original photo.