Lightroom exports blurry picture

[rebeccam30369726]

The above picture is from lightroom and the one below is after exported, and it's way more blurry. The above picture is also more blurry after I screenshot it than what it is in lightroom, I have export quality as 100, does anyone have a fix for this or know why it's happening? i'm not sure if its shows, but on my pc it also comes out more dark/contrast/vibrant. Please help

[Jao vdL]

Check the image size you are exporting at. It is probably scaling down the image. Either export at full size or at the size you will be displaying it. If you are scaling down, output sharpening is very helpful in getting good sharpness. Also make sure you use sRGB as the color space. Also you don't need more than typically quality 80. You can't typically physically see the difference in quality above that.

If you see contrast differences it means you are not using a color managed image viewer to look at your exports or you are working on a display that hasn't been calibrated correctly using calibration hardware.

[rebeccam30369726]

I don't have rezise to fit enabled, so should I enable it to my screen resolution?

Already using sRGB.

Changed it to 80, couldn't really see the difference so thank you, will be using that. Didn't change the blurriness though.

Haven't done any calibration at all, will look in to that and see if it at least helps with the contrast, the blur is what bothers me the most though.

[Jao vdL · Accepted solution]

If it is not resizing upon export what is happening is that the resolution of your image is many times bigger than the actual image. The image viewer you are using then has to scale down the image for display and many image viewers use not very good algorithms to do that resulting in blurriness. This therefore has nothing to do with the file but with the image viewer. You should try different image viewers or simply reimport the exported jpeg into Lightroom. There you will see it will look identical.  Also you can try zooming to 100% (sometimes called 1:1) in the image viewer you are using and compare it to 1:1 in Lightroom. You will see that all detail is there.

Another option is to export at smaller size. So you want to scale down to for example 1000 pixels on the long side. If you do that, it is best to also do medium strength output sharpening for screen display (all in the export panel). When you export an image to a smaller size that is smaller than the resolution of your display, you are forcing the image viewer you are using to display the image at 100% (each pixel in the file is one pixel on your display) and it will not do any scaling that could blur the picture.

[rebeccam30369726]

Thank you soooo much! Imported the saved image to Lightroom and there it was back to sharpness.

But if I don't export at a smaller size, it will still be sharp even though I can't see it in the image viewer right? I'll just then trust Lightroom it's sharp after export as well.

[Jao vdL]

Yes it is just the viewer that does a poor job of scaling down the image to screen resolution.

[Taylorvice88]

That seems to work, however resizing my image (lets say 1000x1000 vs 1250x1250 makes it take up maybe half the screen.  Usually to set a picture as a desktop background, it should be in the 2k pixel range.  I have a Canon T6 which should support exporting at a higher resolution.  I am having the same issue with blurriness.  Anyone know of any better image viewers than the default windows viewer?  Also, when I upload the picture to my FB photography page, or instagram, will it display the blurriness of the exported image, or more what Lightroom shows?

[Jao vdL]

For background pictures what you want to do is first crop to the aspect ratio of your display and then export to the exact size in pixels for your display using medium screen output sharpening. This will give by far the best sharpness for the background image.

[Maze150]

I am also seeing blurry and degraded images on export. Just posted this in the forums. Anyone else having issues with LRC rendering blurry images since the update? I know I haven't suddenly forgot how to edit. Start with a tack sharp Canon RAW image and display side by side before and after and after is blurry even before I start to edit. Then follow my workflow as I have for the last 11 years and export as jpeg and still degraded and blurry. What is up?

[dj_paige]

Let's discuss this in your other thread at https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic/lrc-rendering-blurry-images/td-p/11357643

it doesn't really make sense to discuss this in this thread.