he reverse saturable absorption and optical limiting properties in naphthalocyanine lead, dissolved in dimethyl sulphoxide are studied by using a Q-switched,double frequency ns/ps Nd∶YAG pulse laser system at 532 nm with pulse width of 8 ns,repetition rate of 1 Hz. The experimental results show that the naphthalocyanine lead owns good optical limiting performance, and the ratio of effective excited-state absorption cross section to ground-state absorption cross section of naphthalocyanine lead is approximately to 15.21, which is larger than that of naphthalocyanine copper. The experimental results show that the optical limiting behavior is better than C60, and the excited-state absorption is the main cause of optical limiting. The experimental results approve that the heavy-atom effect increases the reverse saturable absorption which improve the power of optical limiting because they enhance the intersystem crossing rates.