Creating a 2 Line Identity Plate for Lightroom

Last week we outlined how to turn your favorite images into posters using Lightroom.  One of the steps in that process was to create a new Identity Plate to use as the title for your poster.  For Mac users, a Option + Enter should give you a new line of text and all is well.  Unfortunately for PC users such as my self, there is currently no means of creating a 2 line text Identity Plate.  Thanks Adobe.

Luckily you can also use a graphic for your Identity Plate and that's exactly what you'll need to do if you want more than one of text and use a PC.  Lightroom supports jpg, png, gif, bmp and tif file types as Identity Plates.  Because there are no vector based image types supported, you should try to create the Identity Plate image the exact size you want it to appear on your poster.  If you start to re size the Identity Plate graphic on your image, you will likely lose the crispness of your original text.

I used my ancient copy of Adobe PhotoShop CS to create my title, but most any graphics application (PhotoShop, Gimp, etc.) should do the trick.  Here's how I created mine:

1. Create a new transparent file of the dimensions as you'll want it to appear on your poster.  I used 7" wide by 0.5" high.
2. Select the text tool and set your desired font type and size.  In my example, I used the Trajan Pro font - 14pt for the first line of text and 9pt for the second.
3. For "creative effect", I added an additional space between each letter and 2 spaces between words.  I also centered the text to make it easier to center the image on the final poster.

Here's what the image looks like in PhotoShop.

Once happy with the graphic, I saved it as a png and preserved the transparent background.  Back in Lightroom, return to the Print module and scroll down to the Page panel.  Click the drop down arrow in the lower right corner of the Identity Plate section to browse to your newly created graphic.

And there you go.  Whether you need to use this as a workaround for a multi-lined poster title on the PC or you want to create an elaborate graphic to include on your prints, you now have another handy tip in your printing toolbox.

Until next time, keep click'n.
-Ken