Lightroom Export Settings
Best Lightroom Export Settings for Instagram, Facebook, Print, and More
Is it possible to claim to be an expert in Lightroom workflow without enabling it in the export settings? This is an important step because I get a lot of questions from Lightroom users who want to know all kinds of Lightroom export settings. Therefore, for the convenience of Lightroom enthusiasts, I am going to write a comprehensive guide, which will help them to clear their confusion about all the Lightroom export settings. Moreover, if you want to get access to all the features of the Lightroom mobile app without spending a single penny, you should download the Lightroom Mod APK from this website.
Importance of Export Settings in Lightroom
We need to adjust the Lightroom export settings to properly display the image quality, size, tone, format, and dimensions. With the export settings, we can preserve the details of the images to our liking. By choosing the desired options, we can increase the pixels of the image, and this will ultimately improve the quality, but we need to adjust the Lightroom export settings for a higher resolution to get better results. We can customize certain options for photos, videos, and reels to reflect the features of Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest.
Suppose you have edited an image in Lightroom to a higher level and want to make a print of it, but you do not know the Lightroom export settings for printing. Then your efforts will be in vain. Similarly, your editing work will not serve its purpose if you have created a thumbnail or background image for Facebook but do not have the proper knowledge of Lightroom export settings for Facebook. Therefore, a thorough knowledge of Lightroom export settings is a must. This article will prove true for you, and you will be able to export photos for Instagram, Facebook, web, print, etc. easily and without complications.
Basic Lightroom Export Settings
The typical Lightroom image export process involves the following three simple steps:
Selecting Images
Follow these steps to select the photos you want to export:
On the other hand, if you want to select random images instead of all images, follow these steps:
General Export Settings
After you have selected the images you want, go to the top navigation, find the “File” option, and click on it. Then you will see the Export option in the drop-down menu. Click on it and a large pop-up will appear where you need to go through each section and make the required settings. Follow the steps below to complete the settings for each section.
At the top of the pop-up, you will see an option to export to, where you must select the hard drive.
The next segment is Settings in Export Location, where you select the following options:
3. The next section is File Name, where you need to select custom settings for renaming. You can also select Edit from the drop-down menu and make some changes as desired.
4. The next step is File Settings, where you need to select JPEG image format and sRGB color space.
5. Once everything is down, scroll down to Resize Image, where you need to select the image size and resolution. We will talk about this later, as this format can vary, whether you want to export it to Facebook, Instagram, or for printing purposes.
6. The next output is Sharpening, for which I recommend selecting “Sharpen For” and the default amount screen.
7. Select Copyright for metadata only and do not use a watermark, so leave this option unchecked.
8. Do not check post-processing, then it will remain “Nothing”.
9. Click Add on the left > Rename Preset and finally export the preset.
Best Optimized Lightroom Export Settings
The steps discussed above to export edited images from Lightroom were simple, but in this section, I will discuss the Lightroom export settings under certain circumstances:
Export Settings for Instagram
Instagram is a great way to get exposure, make people aware of yourself, and get to know other people through photos and videos. Lightroom offers a great opportunity to optimize photos according to Instagram requirements before we export them if we want to use these photos and videos on Instagram stories or reels. You should optimize your image based on the following features that are highly demanded on Instagram:
| Export Settings | Specified Values |
|---|---|
| Quality | 100 |
| Limit File Size To | Unchecked |
| Image Format | JPEG |
| Color Space | sRGB |
| Don’t Enlarge | Checked |
| Resolution | 240 |
| Sharpen For | Screen |
| Pixels | 1080 |
| Resize to Fit | Short Edge |
| Watermark | Simple copyright watermark |
| Amount | High |
Export Settings for Printing
Depending on what you want to convert and import images for Lightroom export features can vary as I mentioned earlier. For printing purposes, I often prefer high-resolution images and their maximum size, as there are no restrictions on image size that we usually encounter with images on Instagram, Facebook, and other websites. Based on my experience, I am going to share the best practices of the export settings of this great tool for printing:
| Export Settings | Specified Values |
|---|---|
| Quality | 94 |
| Limit File Size To | Unchecked |
| Image Format | JPEG |
| Colour Space | sRGB |
| Don’t Enlarge | Unchecked |
| Resolution | 1000 |
| Resize to Fit | Long Edge |
| Pixels | 1000 |
| Sharpen For | Matte paper |
| Watermark | Unchecked |
| Amount | Standard |
Export Settings for Web
The most important export settings for Lightroom images are for website and blogging purposes. We know that the competition in SEO is increasing day by day as Google is regularly launching new updates. Each new update increases our efforts to rank websites in search engines, so knowing Google’s algorithm recommendations for images is essential.
To perform well in search engines, a website must follow Google’s rules. Being an SEO specialist, I know which images to release for articles and websites, including articles, affiliates, and e-commerce sites, well in advance of release. If you are like me and want to fully optimize your photos, you should follow the following settings:
| Export Settings | Specified Values |
|---|---|
| Image Format | JPEG |
| Colour Space | sRGB |
| Export To | Same folder as the original photo |
| Put in sub-folder | 1 web |
| Resize to Fit | 94 |
| Don’t Enlarge | Unchecked |
| Quality | Long Edge |
| Resolution | 72 |
| Limit File Size To | Unchecked |
| Pixels | 1600 |
| Watermark | Simple copyright watermark |
| Amount | Standard |
| Sharpen For | Screen |
Export settings for Facebook
Just like Instagram, there are certain rules for sharing photos on Facebook. We need to make specific settings regarding image size, format, and resolution, especially when you want to share images on Facebook for branding your digital or non-digital products or for your value. I use the following settings to export images for Facebook which show the best results:
| Export Settings | Specified Values |
|---|---|
| Limit File Size To | Unchecked |
| Resize to Fit | Long Edge |
| Pixels | 2048 |
| Image Format | JPEG |
| Colour Space | sRGB |
| Quality | 90 |
| Sharpen For | Screen |
| Resolution | Don’t matter |
| Don’t Enlarge | Checked |
| Watermark | Simple copyright watermark |
| Amount | Standard |
FAQ,s
Final Thoughts
Lightroom has helped me immensely in creating satisfied customers in the field of photography, like a best friend, and I have been associated with it for 10 years. Now I have decided to guide you so that you can benefit from Lightroom just like me. That is why I am sharing my experiences and best practices with Lightroom, whether it is adding a watermark to Lightroom or creating a collage.
After receiving feedback on other topics that I have covered in this blog, and at the insistence of many users, I have shared my experiences with the best Lightroom export settings. These settings will help you immensely in getting the desired output from this best photo editing software, whether you want to export photos for Facebook, Lightroom, or your websites.
