How to EXPORT YOUR PHOTOS in Lightroom
Exporting your photos in Lightroom might sound like an easy task and it actually is. But not when you open up your export window for the first time and see that whole bunch of information and export possibilities that makes you go nuts!
After all, what are the best settings to use when exporting your photos and how to do that?
Should you export a photo for print the same way you export a photo for social media?
Absolutely not! As a matter of fact, that might be a big issue!
If you export a huge HD JPEG and try to open it with facebook or instagram, many times the platforms will compress the photos and make them look like crap!
So yeah, you think you’re doing the right thing and keeping the quality of your work by doing that but no, many times you’re just doing the opposite! So you gotta prepare your export settings according to what you’re going to use your photos for.
But don’t worry, I’ll help you out. If you want to see the images of the process, please watch the video above, otherwise, here is how you can do it:
- You will select the photo or the photos you want to export by clicking the first image you want to be exported, hit and hold shift and select the last photo you want to export.
2. Once you’ve got your pictures selected, right click on your mouse and go to export. Your export window will pop up and now we will quickly go through all you need to know!
3. First you will choose where you want to export your photos to. So you can just come to “choose” here and select the folder where you want it to be stored. I name one of the folders HD Files and the other one Social Media Files.
4. Done that, you have the option to rename your file. I usually don’t.
5. In File Settings I usually keep these settings just as they are. I usually save my exports to JPEG, 100% quality, original RGB colors.
6. In Image Sizing is where things get interesting and it is mainly where I do the adjustments according to what I’m going to use my photos for.
I will first resize the files that will go to the social media folder. That will work for Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and social media in general. So I’ll Resize to fit, select Megapixels, and write 5 megapixels, 240 pixels per inch.
As I said, if you upload a huge HD file to your social media, your photo might get the quality or the colors distorted, so this size will just be perfect! It’s big enough for you to have quality photos, small enough to avoid weird compressions from the platforms.
7. I usually don’t touch the metadata. The metadata is information you will have when you right click the photo with your mouse and go to get info. So here you can choose what you want people to be able to see if you want.
8. On the export window you will also find a button to add your watermark to the photos. If you already have settled one in Lightroom, you can just import it, but if you haven’t created yours, this is when you can do it if you want and for that you just select “edit watermark”. There you can either upload your logo or type it down yourself. I won’t go into details of this today, but you might want to know that option is available at the export window.
9. I usually do nothing in “post-processing” either. But here is where you can choose your folder with the photos to be automatically opened when your export is finished. Or you can choose that they will be opened automatically in Photoshop, if you always do some final adjustments there after exporting in Lightroom.
10. Hit export.
We are done with the social media files export.
Now for the HD files, the only difference is to the Image Sizing.
Instead of having the resize to fit selected, I just have nothing selected. Then I’ll switch the folder where I’m going to export this photo to, which will be “HD Versions” and hit export!
We are done.
