In today’s video, I’m going to take you behind the scenes in Lightroom. I had many people asking about my export settings for high resolution photos and what numbers I have for my wedding clients when I export their galleries. My goal when exporting high resolution JPEG images is to get as much fo the best resolution as possible so I can then throw it onto a drive, onto a cloud, and back it up. That way, if something were to happen in the future, I’d always have that really beautiful, high resolution JPEG available.
Lightroom Export Settings For
High Resolution Photos
Step One: Decide On Export Location
First things first, click on the export button in the library module of Lightroom. You need to be inside the library module in order to export your images. Once you are ready to export, you’ll see a number of options and the first is export location.
For export location, you need to decide where is the file actually going to go? Will it go on a computer, on a hard drive, or somewhere else? I can choose a specific folder if I’ve already named a folder and drop all of the JPEGS into that. I personally like to have all of my images go into a specific folder on my desktop and I name the folder something useful. Make sure to name your file something that is easy to remember. Usually I name them with the names of my clients or the date.
Pro Tip: I always end my file naming with a C if the images have been color corrected.
Step Two: Setup File Settings
After we decide on the location and name the file, we’ll then setup the file settings. I choose JPEG and I want the quality setting to be at 100. For the color space setting, you want it to be at SRGB. That setting will allow your photos to be ready for print.
After you choose the file settings. you’ll setup the image quality. If I’m doing an archival JPEG, I will NOT re-size to fit anything because you don’t want to limit the size. I’m going to set my resolution to 300 which means it is ready to go into high resolution printing.
Finally, you’ll have the option to sharpen the image. I personally do not sharpen it, but you can choose to sharpen for the screen and the amount can be standard.
Step Three: Finalize Settings
Lastly, you’ll setup any metadata which is any Lightroom information or keywords that you put into the file when you were originally creating the file and importing it. I typically write the keywords in my images so they are easy to find with tags.
Watermarking settings will allow you to add your logo or signature to any of your images. If you want to do this you have to pre-make your watermark in Lightroom PRIOR to the creation and exporting of the file. You have to create your watermark first and then it’ll show up as an option in the settings. I do not mark my images for archiving so I won’t choose that setting when I export for this.
The final decision you get to make is in your post-processing So, after you export, what do you want it to do? Many times people want to open up the files in Photoshop, makes a few changes if needed, but I normally do nothing with this setting. This will allow me to simply find my files on my computer when I’m done.
Once I’m satisfied with my settings, I’ll click ok and export the files. While Lightroom is exporting, I’ll look at my test file just to make sure everything is good to go.
So, there you have it! That’s how I export my images and the settings I use. If you want more knowledge with Lightroom, more insight about it, information about presets, and more, subscribe to the Youtube channel and check out the playlist!
