Batch Convert to jpeg [Re: Image processor in LR]

In Lightroom, a Raw file can remain an unconverted raw file. When you adjust this Raw file in LR, you are only ever viewing a live preview, of the effect of some current settings.

It's a preview of how these settings on that imported file would look if

• it was printed right now;
• or if it was to be sent off for external editing right now in e.g. Photoshop;
• or if a copy was saved on disk, or elsewhere, as a JPG right now... by Export or by Publish.

If you need to do something with your LR-edited picture right now which requires a JPG format file, then the LR command "Export" can make that JPG for you. This is a form of output, logically similar to clicking Print: a brand new file is independently saved.

Usually that exported JPG copy is not re-imported into LR; it is considered derived, disposable, replaceable output. It has been brought into existence with a certain usage purpose in mind.

Your camera Raw / camera JPG, and any Photoshop working file derived from that, are the primary image files that you will be continuing to manage and potentially change further, for the future. Their current editing done within LR, can be at any time viewed within LR. But not from outside of LR; that is simply a consequence of how this all works.

Exporting images can be done singly or in the batch, or else Publish automates to a large extent the job of keeping a series of editable master images inside LR, up-to-date with their external representations in the form of standard JPG files, whether that's somewhere on disk or directly into an online gallery etc.