Lightroom Not Exporting Edits

[AutumnLiebe]

I just spent the last hour reading through forums about my issue, and unfortunately there are about three-years'-worth of conversations with no resolutions for this problem. When I toggle between the Develop and Library modules, some (only some) of the edits I've made in Develop don't carry over into the Library module. I can watch my photo change (usually clarity and sharpness) as I go between the two modules. But not only that, all of a sudden when I export my photos, the unfinished version that I see in Library is the photo that exports. I have checked "automatically write changes into XMP", and I am not exporting as "Original". I have three shoots I am currently editing, and I NEED Lightroom to export these photos correctly for my clients. Can anyone finally shed some light on this issue for me??

The first photo is in Develop module, and the second photo is the Library and exported photo. You can really see the difference when looking at her eyes.

[JoeKostoss]

I have not been able to duplicate this problem.  Perhaps it might help the community if you tell us what version of Lightroom you are using (Actual version number, not simply up to date) and what Platform and operating system. 

[AutumnLiebe]

Thank you for responding to my question! It looks like the answer I needed is exactly what Jao vdL posted above.

[Jao vdL · Accepted solution]

What is happening is that the Develop and Library modules use different ways to scale your image down to the screen resolution. This very subtly affects sharpness and clarity. This is unavoidable and is caused by the fact that your display is a low-resolution preview of the actual file and that the Develop module cannot render the entire raw image constantly as that would be extremely slow, so if you are zoomed out, it will show you a low-res version of the image. Only when you zoom in to 1:1 will it render the complete resolution of the file. When you go back to Library, Lightroom renders a jpeg preview of the image at a size slightly larger than it needs to display and then scale down to your display. This will always soften your image slightly. To even complicate things further, when you export your image at a reduced size for email or web display, you can (and absolutely should!) apply output sharpening. This will counteract some of the softening inherent in scaling down the image. Your final image will look more like what you see in Develop after that. If you don't add output sharpening it will look like what you see in Library. An alternative is to use a much higher resolution display like a 4K display or a retina screen. Those are so much higher resolution that you won't notice these subtle differences.

[AutumnLiebe]

Okay, so it looks like I have a follow-up question to this same problem, if you can help me. I just compared a few of my latest exported photos with what I see in Lightroom, and they are definitely still different! The contrast and clarity specifically are what I'm seeing change. I'm at a loss for what to do to fix it!

[Jao vdL]

Ah. Yeah her eyes look somewhat darker on the left and her hair is darker there too. That looks like a calibration issue to be honest. How  are you calibrating your display?

[AutumnLiebe]

I'm not entirely sure how I have it calibrated, but I believe it's to an sRGB profile. Here are the specs, though I don't really understand them much.

[AutumnLiebe]

Okay, so I did apply the highest setting of sharpening for screen viewing, and it made a positive difference in my final photo. And all the rest of that about why my pictures look different in one module versus another makes perfect sense - I just wasn't aware of it before. Thank you for taking the time to explain all of that!

[Jao vdL]

Hmm, that looks weird to be honest. I would not expect sRGB in the name of a calibration profile and the size of the profile is too small to be a real calibration as that is not enough to have any calibration tables in it. This looks therefore like it is not calibrated and it probably is just a sRGB profile. Generally Macs, including iMacs have a profile called  "Color LCD" as their default that should be a bit better than a plain sRGB profile. If the control panel in System preferences->Displays->Color has the option "Color LCD" in it for profile, try that and see if it makes a difference for the changing of contrast.  What you need to do after that is to get yourself a calibration puck that actually measures and corrects your display. They are not that expensive but are essential if you want good results from doing digital photography as otherwise you can't trust what you see. There are several brands such as the Spyder Pro's, the ColorMunki, the i1 displays and others. Another alternative if you son't want to spend the $150 or so for a good entry level one is to see if one of your local camera clubs has one that they borrow out to members. You can also rent them from lensrentals.com and such.

[AutumnLiebe]

Well I just changed the profile to Color LCD, though didn't notice a difference in the way the screen looks. I'll definitely look into those other options then, and I really appreciate your help with this!

[Jao vdL]

P.S. what version of Lightroom are you running. There were a few that had a bug where Develop would show darker shadows than other modules and then other apps. See here: Jao's photo blog: Further quantification of the Mavericks color management problem. This creeps back in in some versions but if you run LR 5.7.1 or LR 6.8/2015.8 it should not be a problem.

[AutumnLiebe]

My version just says 6.0, not either of the two numbers you wrote above. Does that sound weird or incorrect to you?

Thank you for the link to the blog! I will read it shortly!

[Jao vdL]

That's not the current version, which is 6.8. You can update using the creative cloud app or by going to Install Photoshop Lightroom​ and downloading the latest updater. Click on the ">" in front of "Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 6"  to see them. You only need the latest updater.  I don't remember specifically whether 6.0 had the dark shadows issue but it very well might.