Lightroom: Export Settings For Web Display
category: Lightroom • 2 min read
The problem with the web, is how to show your photos without giving them away. My settings are:
Lightroom export settings for web display
- I set JPEG with the lowest colour space of sRGB because web browsers cannot manage colour profiles. I also set a quality of 70%, which gives enough details, but keep the file small enough not to take to long to load in the web browser.
- Most of the time, I set the size to 640x350 which gives the equivalent of an EGA screen. The maximum file size will be 0.224 megapixels. I also set the resize to fit, so Lightroom will resize to fit my cropping. The 72ppi has nothing to do with the size of the photo. It’s only a directive of which resolution to output the image, but it can be over-written by stating so.
- I always minimize the Embedded Metadata, it’s a habit. Lightroom will strip almost all of the embedded data but keep the copyrights information in the JPEG file. I always add my copyright notice at the bottom.
These are the settings that I use. They have a couple of benefits:
- These Lightroom export settings will make the image load faster.
- These Lightroom export settings will make it less likely that somebody will steal the photo for any other use. I am sure that some of my photos have been copied, I can see it from the web server logs, but they can’t be used for print. Plus my copyright is in the metadata and on the photo itself, like this screen capture.