Export settings

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
January 19, 2022
3 replies
3365 views

I'm a complete novice when it comes to photography but particularly exporting photos. Can anyone give me some recommendations what are the best settings to used to export a raw photo to jpeg when I don't know what the final use of the photo will be. The photos won't be used for anything professional or large scale but I don't want to regret exporting photos to jpg, delete the raw file then regret my settings at a later date. I hope that makes sense.

Windows

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Correct answer dj_paige

If you don't know what the intended use of the exported photo is, there is no such things a "best settings".

but I don't want to regret exporting photos to jpg , delete the raw file then regret my settings at a later date

The easy way to avoid this "regret" is to not delete the RAW. I think that's what most people do. In fact, if you don't have a use in mind for the exported JPG, why even bother to export it? You are just making extra work for yourself. Edit the photo and then leave it alone, un-exported until such time as you actually need the exported jpg for a specific purpose (and then, when you know the purpose, you can ask about what the best export settings are).

Per Berntsen

Community Expert

Raw files are much more valuable than jpgs; unlike jpgs, they contain all the information from the camera sensor.

They can be edited over and over with no quality loss, and since you're new to photography, you will probably want to re-edit them several times. So don't delete your raw files!

Unless you a need a jpg for a specific purpose, there is no need to export. When you do, the export should be tailored to the purpose of the exported file. If you're not happy with the result, you try a new export with different settings.

Once the jpg has served its purpose, you can delete it.

Understanding how digital images work will make all this much easier.

I've written some articles that you may find useful.

What is a digital image?

File formats

Lightroom (Classic) basics

gib39Author

Known Participant

With a standard point and shoot the camera generates a jpg which for most people is small enough in file size but sufficient in quality to look at on a screen or print for a photo frame etc. My issue and I may be over complicating things but if I edit my raw files without exporting and lightroom then became discontinued then what? I would have edited loads of photos but wouldn't necessarily have the jpg to reflect the edit. With a point and shoot we don't necessarily have an end product in mind but what is produced is sufficient for most situation. Sorry its difficult to translate into words what my concerns are.

dj_paige

Legend

Lightroom makes so much money for Adobe, why would they discontinue it?

Even if you're thinking 20 years ahead, Adobe would be risking a huge amount of their business by abandoning a very popular product without any way for users to maintain their work. And even if an Adobe customer doesn't use Lightroom, they could still see what happened to Lightroom and stop purchasing Adobe products because whatever happened to Lightroom users will happen to them next.

The scenario of abandoning Lightroom is never going to happen.

dj_paigeCorrect answer

Legend

If you don't know what the intended use of the exported photo is, there is no such things a "best settings".

but I don't want to regret exporting photos to jpg , delete the raw file then regret my settings at a later date

The easy way to avoid this "regret" is to not delete the RAW. I think that's what most people do. In fact, if you don't have a use in mind for the exported JPG, why even bother to export it? You are just making extra work for yourself. Edit the photo and then leave it alone, un-exported until such time as you actually need the exported jpg for a specific purpose (and then, when you know the purpose, you can ask about what the best export settings are).

gib39Author

Known Participant

Hi, that's what I currently do actually, I don't export unless I know what the use will be. My photos are mainly photos of the family or holidays etc nothing major just memories. Unexported I feel if anything ever happened to lightroom as a software package in the future, my efforts would be wasted. Or if a family member looked back in years to come at the raw files who didn't know anything about lightroom the raw files would be unedited.

Conrad_C

Community Expert

@gib39 wrote:

Hi, that's what I currently do actually, I don't export unless I know what the use will be. My photos are mainly photos of the family or holidays etc nothing major just memories. Unexported I feel if anything ever happened to lightroom as a software package in the future, my efforts would be wasted. Or if a family member looked back in years to come at the raw files who didn't know anything about lightroom the raw files would be unedited.

You may be a novice, but you are thinking ahead…that is a wise question.

It is true that it’s good to have a version of your photos that is easy for others to open in any software, so it’s reasonable to export JPEG versions. Maybe not of all photos, but just the images that you think would be the most valued by your family.

A safe option would be, after editing and correction, to export those important images as JPEG, at a high quality level such as 75, at the full pixel dimensions of the original image, converted to the sRGB color profile, and including all metadata. Create an export preset of your settings, so that it is easy to repeat them at any time with more images.

(A JPEG quality level of 90 or higher is typically not needed. Above 80 or so, the file size starts to grow very quickly, but with no visible difference.)

If any of the scenarios you thought of do happen (Lightroom discontinued, family members don’t know what to do with raw files…), those JPEG versions would be of high enough quality and resolution that if someone has a more specific need in the future, anyone could use them for prints, or make smaller copies for the web or family sharing, with no special software needed.

And then also keep the raw versions in case you want to edit them later. Then you would just update the JPEG version.