Why do we need to export?

We’ve mentioned before, in our fast guide to getting started in Lightroom Classic CC, that Lightroom is a nondestructive editor. This means all the edits you make to your photos in Lightroom, aren’t made to the actual image file. The original image stays the same and Lightroom “overlays” the changes like a filter. 

So, once you have your photo looking hunky dory you’ll need to export the image to a new file with all the changes built in, otherwise, all other programs and apps won’t see the changes.  While Lightroom makes it as easy as pie, it’s not a one size fits all step, the hard part is knowing what the optimal settings are for your use.  

Image files can be tricky, and depending on what you want to do with your photo, exporting it in the right format will make ALL the difference. Seriously – just trying to print a poster of an image that is optimised for the web will give you a weird pixelated result with slightly odd colour to boot!. Even in reverse it’s not great, using a image optimised for printing large on the web doesn’t work, you’ll either crash your site or email with slow load times – or the image will look odd and soft as the web attempts to crunch it.

So size does matter after all!

There’s an ideal size, colour space, file type and more for every purpose.  Facebook, Instagram, emailing, the web, prints of various sizes and different media. The best image file for each purpose will be different.

If this makes you want to scream and pull your hair out – don’t – you can set all these ideal settings up once and save them in the present manager and you never have to think of them again.  Ever!! 

Even better – you can grab my FREE Lightroom export presets and be ready to rock and roll in a jiffy!

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Why size and settings matter

Colour space

Colour spaces in digital editing and printing are crucial.  Colour spaces are like ” secret codes” telling a printer or screen how to display your image.  Unfortunately, understanding colour spaces is tricky, it can be really hard to get a handle on. 

The good news is, for basic editing you don’t need to know anything other than which space you need to use.  If you decide later on to become a master printer or fine art editor then it can be worth reading up on colour spaces. 

Until then, here’s a really good rule of thumb that works every time!

Always use sRGB for web – that includes email and social sharing. 

Use either sRGB or AdobeRGB 1998 for printing (ask your print lab which is best)

That’s all you need to know about colour spaces.

Size

Does size really matter? In photography, the answer is a resounding yes! Whether it’s for print or for the web, getting the right overall pixel size for the output will make the difference between your image being soft, pixelated and blurry, or sharp and smooth.

The confusing part is that the right size changes depending on both the overall size and the application.  For example, an image that will be displayed on a screen at 5×7” and an image to be printed 5×7” will be different file sizes.

The good news is Lightroom can be set up so you don’t need to understand all the intricacies of file size optimisation to get the right result. You can create “presets” and export your images in just the right format in a single click.

Even better, you don’t even have to set up the export presets yourself – I’m sharing mine with you. For Free! Download and install these presets, choose your desired output and boom! You’re done. Presets are the ultimate time savers.

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Exporting in Lightroom Classic CC

Let’s go through the two most common exports together.  Step-by-step.  Together we will export two versions of an image, one that’s perfect for Facebook and one that’s perfect to print at 5×7″.  

Exporting is done in the library module of Lightroom.  Simply select the images you want to export, and click “Export” in the bottom left-hand corner and the export panel will then pop up.

Facebook

Let’s start with creating an image optimised to look fantabulous on Facebook.  What? fantabulous is a word!  

Here are the settings you need to look at.

Export location

As a default, I like to select choose folder later.  (You can choose the same folder as the original, however, you’ll quickly end up with a lot of images and no idea which was meant to be for what!).

When you press export (after completing all the settings below), Lightroom will then ask you where to put the file.  I recommend either in a subfolder named “facebook” or having a folder on your desktop for all your Facebook images.  This way you can regularly clean it out without clogging up your hard drive.

File naming 

Leave as is.

File settings 

Facebook likes jpeg images, in sRGB at a quality of 100. 

Image sizing:

Resize to fit the long edge.  This is key as not every image will exactly match facebooks dimensions.  The import thing is to have the longest edge the correct size and the rest will look after itself. Facebook currently recommends 2048 pixels at 240 pixels per inch for best quality.

Output sharpening. 

Sharpen for screen, standard.

Timesaver tip – at this point click “add” in the bottom left-hand corner to save these settings as a preset.  Give it a name you’ll remember – like “Facebook”.  Next time simply choose it from the dropdown list on the left. No need to remember a thing!

Click export – select your folder for the final image – and you’re done!

Export to print at 6×4” and rename

These are the best settings to export prints to be printed at 6×4”.  I’ve set the preset to save to a new folder on the desk top called “Print”.  And renamed the file to be “6×4 print [original file name]”. Handy for uploading to your local print lab!

Export location

Choose Export to Desktop

Check “Put in Subfolder” and type Print – this will create a new folder called “Print” on your desktop.  I also select “add to catalog” so I can review the exported images in Lightroom.

File naming:  Check  “Rename To” and select “Custom Name – Original File Number”.  In “Custom Text” Type “6×4 print”.  Below this field, you will see a preview of the new file name. 

File settings

JPEG at a quality of 80 – Reducing the quality to 80 has no material effect on print quality and but will reduce the size of the file you need to upload.  This is really helpful for upload times and data usage. I use a pro-lab that prefers files in AdobeRGB.  Ask your lab what they prefer and select that option.  Consumer labs mostly prefer sRGB.

Image sizing

Resize to fit the long edge.  Note – make sure your images have been cropped to the same aspect ratio as what you plan to print otherwise you might loose parts of an image or end up with white space. The image below is cropped to the aspect ratio of 5×7.  Printed at 6×4, parts of the image will be cropped off or it will print with spaces on the side.

Choose 6 and inches, at a resolution of 300ppi.  I also check “Don’t enlarge” as most original images will be at least this big.  And if not, most images print perfectly at resolutions as low at 200dpi.  Enlarging an image unnecessarily could result in a fuzzy image.

Output sharpening  

Glossy paper and low.  Of course, if you are using matt paper – choose this instead.  If you find you are a “heavy” sharpener in Lightroom, don’t sharpen at this step at all.

Timesaver tip – at this point click “add” in the bottom left-hand corner to save these settings as a preset.  Give it a name you’ll remember – like 6×4 print.  Next time simply choose it from the dropdown list on the left. No need to remember a thing!

Click export – select your folder for the final image – and you’re done!

What is a “clean edit”?

“Clean Edit” is a term you hear a lot in photography circles, thankfully we aren’t talking about household chores, you can do a clean edit when your desk is in a complete shambles, just as you can clean edit a picture of your kids bedroom/rubbish tip!  A clean edit simply means, editing the image so that it looks pretty much how your eyes saw it when you took the photo.  No extra filters or funky colour effects and keeping the image relatively true to life.  Perfect for child photography!

As you grow in your photography journey you might find yourself at times drawn to a particular style, like matt finish, B&W, vivid colour or even grunge. Particular editing styles go in and out of fashion and while fun, keep in mind that you can end up dating your photos if effects are used with too heavy a hand.  I find most of the time a clean edit produces the most timeless effect, one that doesn’t have me cringing in years to come! 

Let’s jump in and get started!

I’ve chosen this image of my son on a sand dune, it was taken just before sunset – on a fizzer of a sunset day – so colour in the sky was pretty non-existent.  I could do a funky edit and “fake” an amazing sunset, but then this wouldn’t be a “clean edit” tutorial, yes?

When editing in Lightroom, I always work through the tool palates from top to bottom. Not only is it a nice logical workflow, it produces great results.

Step 1 | Crop & straighten

First up, I like to crop and straighten the image.  I don’t know about you, but I can never take a straight image!

Because this image has sand dunes of a horizon it’s not so bad, but I still grab the crop tool and then the ruler and make a slight adjustment.  Then crop in a little using the “rule of thirds guides”  so that the composition feels better.

Step 2 | Basic edits / global adjustments

Next up is the basics panel, and again I work through this panel from top to bottom.

White balance

You can get very strict with white balance, using all sorts of measurement tools and scientific formula’s if you want to.  But who has that kind of time?  Even with a clean edit, it’s ok to interpret the image to suit your preferences making it slightly warmer or cooler than “strictly” accurate on the day.  I usually start with auto or as shot, then choose my preference, my tastes generally run to a little warmer.

Straight out of camera this image felt a little green and cool, so I’ve bumped the temp and tint up a touch.

Exposure

The image is quite bright, but a beach is! So I’ve only brought it down just a smidge.

Contrast

I don’t like to add a lot of contrast with this slider, and sometimes I don’t even use it.  More subtle and targeted contrast can be achieved with the next section.  In this image, I go for +8.

Highlights / shadows / whites / blacks

When adjusting these you need to look at your image analytically, ask yourself, do the lightest parts look to bright? The darkest to black and lacking in detail? Overall is it a little flat, with no real highlight or shadow? And adjust accordingly. This shot, is a little flat, with no real highlights or shadows and could do with a little more punch.

I bring the highlights down -28 to give a bit more definition to the sky and the grasses.  Shadows to -19 and whites up to +13 and the blacks to -37 a fair amount to really add that punch.

Clarity

I reduce the clarity a little to slightly take the edge of the grasses and increased the vibrance a touch.

Tone curve

I’ve slightly darkened the shadows by bringing the bottom left across a fraction.

For beginners, we can skip over the HSL/Colour/B&W, and split toning panels.

Step 3 | Sharpen

In the detail panel, zoomed into 100% I move the amount up to 43. I can’t see any noise or other issues so leave the rest as it is.

Step 4 | Advanced / local Adjustments

Now I jump down to the effects panel. 

Vignette

Often I’ll add a very subtle, soft edged vignette to an image, to draw your eye to the subject. This image, however, works better with out a vignette so I’ve left this alone.

Remove an object

Just because it’s a clean edit, it doesn’t mean you can’t clean it up a little.  I’m not in love with the cuttle fish on the sand – it looks more like rubbish – so I’ve removed it using the spot removal tool.

Selective dodge or burn

Lastly, I look to see if any parts of the image could do with a selective lightening or darkening.  Often the sky can needs to be darkened a little to reflect the colour on the day – unfortunately because the sunset was a real fizzer on this day, there’s not much that can be done with this sky so I just pull it back a little with the brush tool.

Lastly – I always take a look at the image and see if there is anything I want to change or tweak now I’ve finished all my edits.  Remember when editing less is more!  It’s really easy to go to far and end up with a weird pop art looking number. 

And that’s it!  Here’s the before and after with a clean Lightroom edit.

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links, however, be assured I only ever recommend products or services I personally use and love.

I’ve put together the top 4 Lightroom Classic CC quick edits you’ll use over and over and over!  They might be small, but mastering these four fixes,  will have a BIG impact on your photos!

I remember when I first started using Lightroom.  I got the basics of Lightroom sorted. I managed to import a photo, checked out the library module and had a play with the develop module. Then I started to get really excited about the potential of what it could do. I even sort of “got” what each of the basic sliders did. 

But actually processing an image so it looked good? 

Not a chance. 

If I’m honest, finding the right mix of adjustments seemed to elude me and most of my photos ended up looking like a cross between a 70’s cartoon strip and futuristic hologram!!

Eventually, I worked out the key was not trying to do everything at once. Instead, if I simply worked on fixing one or two problems with a photo at a time rather than jumping in and trying to take a photo from “zero” to “hero”.  

So where to start?  What top fixes or edits should you master first?  I’ve got your back. 

1 | Global Exposure fix in Lightroom Classic CC

Let me let you in on a little secret! Even professional photographers don’t always nail our exposure in camera.  Say, for example, I’m shooting in natural light on a cloudy day and the sun comes out from behind a cloud, I might not adjust my exposure fast enough and end up with overexposed images.  Or, my favourite stuff up, I bump a dial (yep, that happens) and it’s a few frames before I notice and I end up with an under exposed or over exposed image.  A lot of the time, you can still save the image – and Lightroom is the business for fixing exposure in a snap.

Exposure issues are fixed easily in the basics panel using these five sliders – The best way to understand how these will work is to have a play, open an image and move take turns moving each slider to the far right and far left and watch what changes in your image.

Exposure

This slider makes a global adjustment across the whole image brightening or darkening every part of the photo. It’s the best place to start. Slide it right to brighten and left to darken until the image mostly looks right.

Highlights

Next look at the brightest parts of the image, you can selectively lighten or darkened them with this slider. 

Keep an eye on the photo – the aim is to bring in a little detail in the highlights if darkening or brighten to add contrast.  Be like Goldilocks and aim for just right.  Darken the highlights too much and you might “block it up” where it becomes a splodgy spot, too light and they might become white glowing splotches!

Shadows

The shadow slider will only affect the darkish parts of the image (not the blacks).  Darkening shadows can add contrast and brightening shadows can bring some needed detail into the shadows.  Just keep an eye on your image and make sure you’ve not gone too far either way, giving that weird comic book feel. 

Whites

The whites slider is the opposite to the shadows, affecting only the lightish parts of the image.  Just like the highlights you can go too far and end up with a splodgy looking image.

Blacks

The black slider is the opposite to the highlights slider and will adjust only the darkest parts of the image. 

Again keep an eye on the photo, if you brighten these too much you can get a comic book effect, to dark and your photo will be very grungy!

Another way to look at it is to imagine the image’s tones all split into four from lightest to darkest.  It’s like a sliding scale.

You won’t always adjust all four and will often go back and forth tweaking each one and the overall exposure to get the right result for the photo, in less than a minute! 

A few quick adjustments took this underexposed image to perfect!

2 | Fixing white balance in Lightroom Classic CC

White balance refers to the colour temperature or the warmth of an image.  An image with the wrong colour temperature can look really off – fortunately, it’s easily fixed in Lightroom.

Warm

The temp and tint sliders are the key tools for correcting exposure.  These will look slightly different if you are working in raw or jpeg, and a raw image will be easier to correct, but the principle is the same.

Raw files will show the exact white balance levels shot

Temp

Move to the right and the image becomes more yellow, to the left and more blue.

Tint

Move to the right and the image becomes more magenta (pink), to the left green.

The simple fix is to adjust the sliders until the image looks right to you. I often try Auto first – sometimes it’s perfect or much closer to what I want. Colour balance can also be selective, I often “warm up” images taken in cooler light.

“Quick tip” if you have a neutral part of your image you can select the eyedropper and click it on the neutral part and Lightroom will set the white balance.  Use your judgement though, it can be affected by different lights and colour and not always work.

Once the white balance is corrected the image has a much nicer feel.

3 | Removing an object in Lightroom Classic CC

We’ve all taken great photos where we wish something wasn’t there! Maybe rubbish on the grass, a toy, or a dust spot in the sky from the lens.  Heck, one of my favourite portrait locations has a sign right where people look best!!

The great news is, it’s really easy to remove objects in Lightroom – as long as you can choose an area that’s “clean” to copy from.  Wait.  What do you mean by “clean”???    Say for example you have a picture of your kids on the grass at the park, the stars aligned and they were all looking great in the one photo!!  But, there was a chip packed on the grass too close to crop out. As long as you have a section of clean grass you can remove the chip packet with a few clicks in Lightroom. 

Here’s what you need to do. Open up the tools palette and click on the Spot removal tool

Open up the tools palette and click on the Spot removal tool.

Go over to the object you want to remove and colour it in (you can adjust the brush size if that’s easier) 

Lightroom will then “guess a clean spot to use to “remove the object.  If it’s guessed wrong (like I think it did here, I don’t like how it’s chosen a spot with a small rock) you can simply move it to a better spot.

So I repositioned it to a cleaner spot.

If you want, go crazy and get rid of all the big rocks and seaweed!

And that’s it.  Unwanted objects removed!

If only decluttering my house was that simple . . . 

4 | Simple sharpening in Lightroom Classic CC

Lightroom is great for quickly sharpening your images.  Before I sharpen, I like to make sure my image is zoomed into 100% so that I can keep an eye on “noise” levels  (that grainy look), the more you sharpen, the more noise appears in an image.

Sharpening is done in the “Detail Panel” and often the default setting is often pretty good.  If you need to, you can boost it up a bit by moving the amount and the radius up little.

It’s hard to show online as various displays also change things, but you can see the difference here in this raw image, from unsharpened to sharpened.

While adding a little simple sharpening is easy, sharpening can be complicated and a little understanding of what’s happening can help you get the right results.  I’ll be going into sharpening in an easy to understand way in my Lightroom course that’s due for release soon 🙂

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For now, I recommend having a little play with sharpening, be gentle and gentle, keep an eye out for noise and pull back if needed.  Less is often more when it comes to sharpening.  Oversharpened images have that “overcooked” look. Like this weird patterned effect!

How does JPEG Vs RAW effect sharping?

A jpeg image will actually already have some sharpening applied in camera depending on your camera and jpeg settings. So it might not need much sharping in post.  Whereas a raw image will not have any, almost all raw images will benefit from some sharpening.

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links, however, be assured I only ever recommend products or services I personally use and love.