3 Correct answers
What are the original width and height of the image in pixels?
If you’re asking for a 1920 x 1080 image, that is a 16:9 aspect ratio. Your export settings should work if the original image is also 16:9.
But if the original image is a different aspect ratio, you’ll have to crop it to 16:9 before exporting, because export will not distort an image to fit a different aspect ratio than the original. Instead, export resizes proportionally, preserving the original aspect ratio, which is how it’s expec
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To add to the good answers from @johnrellis and @Conrad_C - Some visual suggestions:
The Setting of Dimensions in the export defines an imaginary 'box' that your new image has to fit within. If your original image is not in the same ratio as the export dimensions then you will see something like this, with the resulting pixel dimensions (shown on images)-
1) The defined Export dimensions (a 'box') [Red]
2) An original image in a square format (eg. 4000 x 4000px) 1:1 ratio . [Blue]
3) An or
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OK, then the animation below should help explain exactly what is going on, it’s a different way of showing what Rob_Cullen already illustrated. As ExUSA said, 6960 x 4640 px works out to a common 3:2 aspect ratio digital camera sensor frame, while the 1920 x 1080 px dimensions you’re exporting to is a different 16:9 aspect ratio frame commonly used by HDTV.
So, as we’ve all been saying, your starting and ending frames have different width-to-height proportions, so to get from 6960 x 4640 px to
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Replies
OK, then the animation below should help explain exactly what is going on, it’s a different way of showing what Rob_Cullen already illustrated. As ExUSA said, 6960 x 4640 px works out to a common 3:2 aspect ratio digital camera sensor frame, while the 1920 x 1080 px dimensions you’re exporting to is a different 16:9 aspect ratio frame commonly used by HDTV.
So, as we’ve all been saying, your starting and ending frames have different width-to-height proportions, so to get from 6960 x 4640 px to 1920 x 1080 px you have to resolve the difference in proportions. The export feature in just about all photo apps you’ll ever find (Adobe and non-Adobe) scales proportionally, so it will preserve your image’s 3:2 proportion within the 16:9 frame you’re asking for, as shown in the demo below.
If you don’t want that result, you crop the image to 16:9 before exporting so that you can decide how to trim off the top and bottom so that the 3:2 picture fills the 16:9 final dimensions. The only other option is to distort the image non-proportionally to stretch the 3:2 image to fit 16:9, but the distortion looks bad so no one does that; if you did want that uncommon “stretch” solution it would have to be done in another photo editor such as Photoshop.
Again, this is how image scaling works in general. It isn’t specific to Lightroom Classic, it would happen with any software. And, by the way, this is also how it must work if you aren’t even using a computer: If you were in a photo darkroom in the year 1964 with a 35mm (3:2) film negative, and you wanted to print an enlargement on the standard paper size of 10 x 8 inches (5:4), you would have to crop out the ends of the 3:2 aspect ratio original in the darkroom enlarger to fill that 5:4 aspect ratio print.
To add to the good answers from @johnrellis and @Conrad_C - Some visual suggestions:
The Setting of Dimensions in the export defines an imaginary 'box' that your new image has to fit within. If your original image is not in the same ratio as the export dimensions then you will see something like this, with the resulting pixel dimensions (shown on images)-
1) The defined Export dimensions (a 'box') [Red]
2) An original image in a square format (eg. 4000 x 4000px) 1:1 ratio . [Blue]
3) An original image (eg. 7680 x 3360px) in a panoramic ratio [Yellow]
4) An original image (eg. 2560 x 4320px) in portrait orientation or cropped to a vertical. [Green]
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