Lightroom: Export Settings for JPEGs

Lightroom allows you to export your photos in:

• JPG: Joint Photographic Experts Group
• PSD: Photoshop document Export settings for PSD
• tiff: Either “Tagged Image File Format” or “Tag Image File Format” depending on when. Now it’s only TIFF Export settings for TIFF
• DNG: Digital negative Export settings for DNG
• Original Export settings for Originals

Exporting photos as JPEGs is mostly done to send photos at a lower resolution than the original photo. This is either for saving space such as email or for business decisions, so that people do not make their own large print. The exported JPEG photo is the one after all the edits are done in Lightroom.

First you select your photos, then in Library module, select the Export button and you will get:

1. Where to export the photos? The original folder or any other specific folder?
2. If the file exists, what will Lightroom do? Ask you, overwrite, or rename the new file?
3. Any naming scheme? The original file, whatever you want… I usually use the same naming system that I use to import the files. See: [Lightroom: How to Set File Names][6] for my personal preferences to name files and photos.
4. Select the JPEG format. The Color Space can be either sRGB, AdobeRGB, or ProPhoto RGB. Usually for JPEGs use sRGB, the lowest “color gamut”, the complete set of colours in a photo for a specific device. I don’t really understand the point of using another colour space than sRGB in JPEGs. The wider colour gamut gets clobbered by the compression even if you use the 100% or no compression. The Quality of the JPEG photo is the amount of compression done. The higher the compression, the lower the quality of the JPEG photo. I usually set the color space as sRGB and the compression between 50% to 66%. The photo, while still viewable, will not print to a large print.
5. Image sizing: Original size or shrink it? You set the maximum width or the maximum height of your photos. The lower the number, the smaller the file size. Don’t Enlarge will prevent Lightroom from enlarging your photos if the size required is larger that the JPEG produced by Lightroom.
6. Metadata: If you Minimize Embedded Metadata, Lightroom will only include the copyrights. Write Keywords As Lightroom Hierarchy will use the pipe ( | ) to show parent/child relationships in the keywords such as “Dog|Labrador”. Add Copyright Watermark will add a copyright watermark, as text at the bottom right of the photos, but only if you have entered IPTC, copyright, metadata.