About print templates

Templates contain layouts for printing your photos, including any text overlays and print job settings. The Lightroom Template Browser in the Print module contains premade templates for common tasks, such as making contact sheets and picture packages. The Template Browser also lists custom templates you have saved. Moving the pointer over a name in the Template Browser displays its page layout in the Preview panel at the top of the left column. Clicking a template name displays a preview of selected photos in the work area. The preview updates when you choose a different template or specify different print options, such as add text overlays.

Lightroom offers two types of layout templates: Grid templates and Picture Package templates. Grid templates let you print one or more photos of the same size in a variety of configurations, such as in a 4-x-5 contact sheet. Picture Package templates let you arrange multiple instances of one photo on one or more pages. Picture Package layouts are optimized for page space and for the minimal cut lines, but they can be manually adjusted as well. Picture Packages are good for school photos and wedding portraiture.

All templates have image cells for containing photos and margin information. If you specify overlay options, a template can also contain text areas. The image cells and margins in a template scale to accommodate the paper size you specify.

Print job settings, including the paper size and printer, are also saved in a print template.

You can create new templates by modifying the settings of existing templates. Select a template, and then use the controls in the right panels of the Print module, specify the paper size and printer settings in the toolbar, and then add a custom template to a folder. You can also modify the image cells in a template by dragging the margin guides or cell boundaries. Layout setting modifications, overlays, and print job specifications can be saved as a custom template.