Skip to main content
A
Ashlee35909171fd59
Participant
March 6, 2024
Question

Exporting High Res Photos

  • March 6, 2024
  • 2 replies
  • 2896 views

Hi there! I have light room classic and have recently started editing photos on it. I have saved my photos as:

•Jpeg

•Quality 100

•300 ppi

•output for screen

 

they appear crisp and clear on Instagram and in my photo gallery. However, on Facebook they end up looking a bit grainy. Do I need to save with "resize to fit" (long edge) 2,048 pixels so that it does not appear grainy or pixelated specifically on Facebook? 

I would prefer just to save as high res for clients, but didn't know if it's common to run into problems with clients photos not appearing as clear on Facebook. 

as a photographer would you recommend just delivering high res photos in a gallery, or do you also provide web res photos that appear clear on Facebook? My gut thought would be that this is extra step is not necessary? 
thanks!! 

**I would also add that once I have exported a photo to my external hard drive I have clicked on that picture and air dropped it to my phone and sent to a friend, which then appeared blurry on Facebook...that could that actually be the problem?

    2 replies

    D
    DS256
    Inspiring
    March 7, 2024

    As an FYI, the 'Resolution' (PPI) only applies if you have selected a physical dimension in 'Resize to Fit' like inches or cm. I don't know why Adobe doesn't gray Resolution out when it doesn't apply.

    Per Berntsen
    Community Expert
    Per BerntsenCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    March 7, 2024

    The ppi value still applies when you print an image, regardless of how it was exported.

    If you print a 2400 x 3000 image exported at 300 ppi, it will print at 8 x 10 inches. There are no references to physical dimensions in a digital image, so dimensions are always the result of the calculation pixel dimensions / ppi = printed dimensions in inches. When you export with physical dimensions, LrC does the math for you, and makes sure that the correct pixel dimensions are used.

     

    Using a ppi value when exporting in pixels can be useful if you don't want others to print an image.

    For instance, an image with a width of 2000 pixels will print at 1 inch with the ppi set to 2000.

    If the ppi is set to 1, it will print at 2000 inches with terrible quality.

     

     

    J
    Community Expert
    Jao vdLCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    March 7, 2024

    In practice the ppi value in the file's metadata gets completely ignored. There really is no software that uses it to enforce any size of printing. So if you export at 2000 pixels absolutely nothing keeps anybody from printing that at 2 meter size (except quality of the final print of course) or even a very high quality print at 8" tall. The metadata is just a hint that gets ignored by basically everything so it is best to completely ignore it except as a quick aid for having Lightroom itself calculate the dimension in pixels for you if the mental math is too hard.

      J
      Community Expert
      Jao vdLCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      March 7, 2024

      If youy are going to facebook or instagram, counterintuitively and somewhat ironically, you DO NOT WANT to upload high quality images. This makes facebook and instagram heavily recompress your images and completely maul them. The trick for instagram is to deliver images in jpeg at quality of around 85 (indistinguishable from 100 but far lower filesize) and most importantly scale them to 1080 pixels on the long side (if cropped square or 5:4) and use medium screen output sharpening. Color space should be jpeg. For facebook also make sure to NEVER use quality 100 but somewhat lower quality (85 is a good guideline) and scale to a max of 1800 pixels or so. The major thing to do is to make sure the size in kilobytes of your images is not too large. Facebook and other social network sites make money by selling your views of ads to companies. Their costs involve storage space and bandwidth so they always recompress your images and scale them down. Instead of letting them do that, you're best off doing it yourself. This will yield better quality then giving them high quality source images. 

        H
        hanomann
        Known Participant
        March 7, 2024

        Color space should be sRGB, jpg is a file format.

        Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
        Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices