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Known Participant
October 5, 2011
Released

P: Export images at multiple resolutions in one go

  • October 5, 2011
  • 113 replies
  • 5072 views

I have discovered through experimentation that photos published to Facebook look best at 2048 pixels on the longest side (the maximum it supports) but images measuring 960 pixels on the longest side come a very close second so that's what I export at when Facebook.

I also publish the images on my own website, which uses SmugMug as a backend and is capable of automatically displaying delivering higher resolution photos (than Facebook) to the browser depending on the viewport size, so I export at 1400px resolution to strike a balance between filesize and image quality.

My problem is that it's not currently possible to export these two sets of images at the same time, I have to do them one after each other (because doing them in parallel is MORE than twice as slow due to LR's poor parallelisation of task execution), manually switching between different export resolutions and folders.

Instead, I would like to be able to pick two (or more) resolutions to export at, set (sticky) subfolder names for them (so that they end up in separate folders within the base export folder), and set LR to export all the images in one go. This would save me a huge amount of manual faffing around every time I export, and because LR would only have to fully render each image once (instead of twice as at present) it would dramatically reduce the total time taken to export both sets of images.

I realise that it should be possible to write a plugin to achieve this (and I'm looking into it) but surely exporting a set of images multiple times at varying resolutions is a fairly common use case (e.g. web/client DVD res and print ordering res for wedding photos) and it would therefore be of benefit to a significant proportion of the LR user base to make it worthwhile Adobe implementing it as a native feature?

113 replies

john beardsworth
Community Expert
Community Expert
July 5, 2019
Who do you think you will influence (assuming that's what you do want) when you come here as Mr Angry insulting other customers? In this case I happen to agree that grouping presets and running them in one go has always seemed an obvious next step for the export preset feature. I wrote a plugin for myself, and if I can do this it makes me more surprised that it's never been a priority for Adobe. Should be a quick win? But 40-odd votes in 8 years may tell you why not. I would certainly have put this request way higher than reordering Develop panels, but the latter got more votes, just as moving around deckchairs was probably more popular with Titanic's customers than listening to the evacuation procedures. I wouldn't call it "basic" though, or think its absence amounts to making fools of anyone.
Inspiring
July 5, 2019
I know why I wrote it, and for whom I wrote it. Certainly not here to make friends with those trying to apologize for Adobe's blunders, while Adobe makes fools of paying clients. But like I said, i'd like to be entertained if I'm not getting features even after paying for a subscription. Your response was neither helpful nor entertaining and it also didn't defend Adobe.  
Inspiring
July 5, 2019
One would've thought that.. some of these would be default options in the export offered by a digital asset management app. 
john beardsworth
Community Expert
Community Expert
July 5, 2019
Re-read your post. If it isn't obvious....

Inspiring
July 5, 2019
Leroy Schulz had the best suggestion. At least allow us to run multiple presets at one go, and *allow us to duplicate a folder of export presets* so that we could keep doing this for every separate shoot or requirement.
Inspiring
July 5, 2019
What's the relevance?
john beardsworth
Community Expert
Community Expert
July 5, 2019
I’m eagerly waiting for one of the Lightroom apologists to drum up a reason for not doing this.
If we aren’t going to get a basic feature like this I should at least be entertained.. just like they entertain us with reasons for not supporting multiple mobile catalog syncing. It seems like this forum exists only for LR defenders to assert that LR has no problems and everything problematic in LR is done for a good reason.
How to win friends and influence people?
Inspiring
July 5, 2019
I’m eagerly waiting for one of the Lightroom apologists to drum up a reason for not doing this.
If we aren’t going to get a basic feature like this I should at least be entertained.. just like they entertain us with reasons for not supporting multiple mobile catalog syncing. It seems like this forum exists only for LR defenders to assert that LR has no problems and everything problematic in LR is done for a good reason.
FrostyOfTheNorth
Known Participant
October 21, 2018
That's exactly my case.  1) low res without watermark, 2) low res with waterwark, 3) high res for archive.  Every day I do this over and over.  How simple would it be to have export sets where with one click I could export everything?  C'mon Adobe.  With the billions you're making from us with the subscription model, surely you can put a few resources into developing this feature.
Inspiring
October 21, 2018


For example, every export I do, I have a preset for full res with a watermark, full res without a watermark, and smaller for Instagram. It would be great if I could just hit export once to do all those.