Exporting High Res Photos

[Ashlee35909171fd59]

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?

[Jao vdL]

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. 

[hanomann]

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

[DS256]

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]

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.

[Jao vdL]

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.

[Conrad_C]

The ppi value may not be enforced, but that is not the same thing as it being meaningless and useless. If that was true, there wouldn’t be so many complaints about Adobe app behaviors that are tied to ppi metadata.

One example is how print apps like Adobe InDesign interpret the ppi value. They read the ppi value to assign the default physical size of the image on the layout. If you have two images and they are both 3000 x 2400 pixels, image A has a ppi value of 300 and image B has a ppi value of 72, when you click to place the image in InDesign, image A comes in at a default size that according to the rulers is 10 x 8 inches, and image B comes in at a default size of 41.6 inches which will completely overwhelm the spread, causing alarm in some users even though we know that all they have to do is size it down to the 10 x 8 inches that was probably intended, and that will result in 300 ppi. But the point is that if the ppi value at the intended physical size was embedded in the first place, extra scaling steps are avoided. So the ppi value had a real effect on production, and unexpected ppi values cause production confusion especially for beginners.

Another example is how Photoshop unfortunately uses the ppi value to similarly infer the physical size of an image when placing files, even if the user is creating a document that will never be printed. There are recurring threads on these forums about people frustrated when the ppi value varies, because Photoshop uses the ppi value to set the initial physical size of a placed file. If you create two identical files of the same pixel dimensions, and the only thing different is the ppi value, they place in Photoshop at different sizes. So again, the ppi value is not meaningless, the software is basing important decisions on it, and the whole production workflow goes more smoothly if the ppi value is not brushed aside and dismissed, but mindfully paid attention to in the context of the production requirements of the job.

[DS256]

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.

I'd have to disagree. From a quick experiment, if I say that I want to Export a 8x10 @ 321ppi. If gives me a JPG of 3210x2143. In the metadata, the X/Y Resolution is list as 321 in inches. The image size is 3210x2143. The reference to 8x10 is completely lost and it is left to the maker to know that they want to print this as an 8x10 @ 321ppi.

None of the 'print' tools I have on Windows 10 recognizes that it should print the image as 8x10 except PS that does the reverse math for a 100% scale photo.

[richardplondon]

A certain ppi is often requested for good reason when an image is being supplied for placement into (prepress / publishing) layout software. Because it will then place predictably, without shooting off too big or too small on the page; also it will not generate a huge or a tiny working screen-preview within that software. It will behave as expected and as desired.

IOW even though appropriate pixel dimensions may be being produced regardless of PPI, having labelled those pixels with a much higher or lower PPI figure than was asked for by the recipient, could disrupt the recipient's own workflow.

[DS256]

"A certain ppi is often requested for good reason when an image is being supplied for placement into (prepress / publishing) layout software. " Thank you for sharing that @richardplondon. After all these years, I know understand a better definition of there it's used.

[richardplondon]

To be clear, when the intended usage is viewing on screen / in web - or for someone else to edit further in Photoshop - PPI number can safely be disregarded.

[D Fosse]

@DS256 

This becomes much easier to understand if you just read ppi literally, word for word: pixels per inch. It means exactly what it says, nothing more, nothing less. There's no hidden meaning.

Pixels per inch = pixels / inches.

If you know any two of these, the third is given. A simple equation.

[DS256]

@DS256 

This becomes much easier to understand if you just read ppi literally, word for word: pixels per inch. It means exactly what it says, nothing more, nothing less. There's no hidden meaning.

Pixels per inch = pixels / inches.

If you know any two of these, the third is given. A simple equation.

By @D Fosse

Oh I understand PPI but just don't have to care about it in what I do.