Export Single Highlighted Photo from Multiple Selection

Nothing wrong with the idea, but it might take a while for it to rise to the top of the priority ranking if you posted this in the official Feature Requests community. It would be going up against quite a few other requests being voted on.

For a solution that you can use right now, a Quick Collection would be the fastest way because this fits its role as a temporary processing area. I would do it in the following way, including how to get back to the source while keeping the exact way the images were selected. First I spell it out so that you know exactly what’s happening, but after that I describe the simpler power-user way (the way you’d do it if you do this all the time and like shortcuts).

The full explanation:

1. Choose File > Clear Quick Collection to make sure nothing else is in there.
2. In the Catalog panel, glance at Quick Collection to make sure there is a + sign after it to make sure it’s the target collection. (If not, choose File > Set Quick Collection As Target.)
3. Choose Photo > Add to Quick Collection (or just drag and drop them). All selected photos are added, and the most selected photo is still the most selected one.
4. Choose File > Show Quick Collection (or click Quick Collection).
5. Choose Edit > Select Only Active Photo.
6. Export the one selected image.
7. Choose Edit > Select All to restore the selection you had before.
8. Choose File > Return to Previous Content or Window > Go Back. This returns you to the source (folder or collection) you were working in previously. You find yourself back to the exact selection state you were in at step 1, so you can continue on with what you were doing.
9. If you make a new set of selected images, repeat steps 1 through 8.

(Edit: I didn’t test whether this would work if the source was face detection, but you can try it. If it does work, then keep reading…)

Now this is how it could look if you do this a lot and wanted to blow through the process in a few seconds using only the keyboard shortcuts for the commands listed above (Mac shortcuts shown below):

1. Command+Shift+B
2. (only if needed) Command+Option+Shift+B
3. B
4. Command+Shift+D
5. (whichever Export keyboard shortcut you use)
6. Command+A
7. Command+B or Command+Option+Left Arrow

Maybe somebody could script that, or if you have a macro program you can have it run that sequence.

You don’t tell us, so please tell us … are you using Lightroom Classic, or some other software?

If Lightroom Classic:

One idea is to create a Quick Collection which contains all of the selected photos. So select all of the photos of interest in the Library Module and press B. Then navigate to the quick collection (its on the left side of the Library Module under Catalog), select only the one you want to export, and export it. Then in the quick collection, highlight all with Ctrl-A (although this seems unnecessary at this point, but maybe I’m not understanding the question completely).

For more information about Quick Collections, see https://lightroomguy.com/lightroom-quick-collection/

There is no way to exclude all selected photos except the currently active photo from export. 

But some operations can apply to that only, depending on where and how you do this.

So it should be possible to apply a keyword, colour flag, Pick status, collection membership or some such to that active photo only - and not to the others highlighted. That will help you later re-find just the particular photo or photos so marked, by filtering them out from the entire Catalog. But that means the other images will need to have been de-selected, unavoidably losing the wider set which you had chosen. So working method will need some reconsideration if you want to proceed like this.

One idea may be to instead of wanting a wider set to all remain highlighted while you attend specially to one or another member of that set:

to ‘solidify’ that highlighted set as a new Collection. This will let you then go from image to image within this set, keeping that work distinct from the remainder of your Catalog, whereby highlighting or de-highlighting won’t then matter. This virtual Collection will persist regardless (for as long or short a time as needed).

Otherwise so far as selectively editing just this photo: if you do that in Develop module not in Library Quick Develop, and provided AutoSync is not active within the Develop module, visual changes should happen only onto the active photo and not affect others also highlighted. But that is only a small piece of the puzzle here and I don’t think the rest is feasible under the current design principles of the Catalog.