Why won't Lightroom save my edits when I export them?

[tracey@ktrmanagers.com.au]

Hi,

I am new to Lightroom and am unsure what I am doing wrong.

I am using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom V6, Windows 11 Home

I have edited a photo to have a black and white background and colour people using a mask, below.

When I try to export it reverts to a full colour photo. Am I missing a step?

Thank you very much in advance for your help  🙂

[moved to the correct forum - Mod.]

[Jim Wilde]

How did you turn the background to B&W? Looking at the image in the filmstrip of the masking screenshot, the background is still in colour, which implies that you haven't yet converted the background. Are you by chance using the mask overlay style of "Image on B&W", which is in fact merely a visual overlay aid and not an actual adjustment to the image.

[JohanElzenga · Accepted solution]

@Jim Wilde is correct. If you look at the sliders in your second screenshot, then you'll see that they are all still at zero. That means that you have created the mask, but you haven't made any adjustments to that masked area yet. You are looking at the mask overlay, not at the result. This is a common misunderstanding. Here's what to do: First you need to invert the mask, so the background is masked. Right now the subject is. Then set the Saturation slider to -100. Now the background will really be B&W and stay that way if you export the image.

[tracey@ktrmanagers.com.au]

Thank you both very much, that is exactly the problem. I didn't realise it wasn't actually making the edit. It is now working perfectly, thank you!! 🙂

[EDPcorp]

Hi Jim, Im having the same problem, however I am creating the mask, editing the part of the photo that was masked, and then exporting to large jpeg. The edits are not showing in the final exported jpeg. My sliders are NOT at zero as shown in Tracey's screen shots. Please advise if you can - its driving me CRAZY since this only happens on random photos, not all of them. Ive been using LR for a year and have created several edited final products but every now and then this happens.

[Aleke]

Hey @EDPcorp, welcome to the Community! I'm here to help.

That's definitely strange. From your screenshots, it looks like only some of your edits are being applied after exporting, rather than the image reverting to its unedited form. Is that right?

Thanks for sharing those screenshots, they're super helpful! To narrow down the issue further, could you share a screenshot of your Masking panel? I suspect the edits made using the Edit panel are being applied correctly, but there might be an issue with the edits in the masks.

When you reply, be sure to tag me with an @ so I can keep up with our conversation. Thanks!

Alek

[EDPcorp]

@Aleke Strange indeed!  As it is only sometimes. I will say that my LR is always clunky and slow often. When I slide a slider it takes a second for the effect to occur. Its up to date. So is my imac which is running plenty of hardward to handle the light editing I do. That having been said, I deleted the masks on the photo to see if starting over would help. It did not. So I have reproduced what I normally do in these screen shots.

[Aleke]

Hey @EDPcorp, thanks for the follow-up! Could you check your export settings for me? Make sure the "Export Original" preset isn't selected, because if "Original + Settings" is chosen as the Image Type, it'll make the export look just like the original image.

If you haven't already, try using the "Export JPG (Small)" or "Export JPG (Large)" presets to see if one of those works. Hopefully, that does the trick. Let me know if it helps! 😄
Alek

[EDPcorp]

Hi @Aleke . So when I export I always choose JPEG Large. There are no other settings Im using. I tried exporting small jpeg. No luck. Im telling you, there's no reason this should be happening other than a glitch in Adobe's LR program. Another interesting thing about the sliders is that when the gradients disappear, all I have to do is click on a slider without even sliding it and the colors reappear again. But I still can't export them. Do you think because lightroom is cloud based this is causing my issue? I paused syncing because I didnt want it to sync what was on my laptop lightroom since I use my desktop and laptop for different kinds of projects. Maybe I should try using LRC instead? Maybe I need to uninstall and reinstall lightroom? That would be a pain considering all the photos I have - Id need to export them all to back them up. But what other choice might I have?  I honestly dont think this will fix. I challenge any Adobe software programmer expert to fix this for me - I bet they cannot.

[Aleke]

Hey @EDPcorp! Sorry we haven't figured this out yet. Could you try a couple more things for me?

First, try exporting the image through Lightroom Web. Sometimes when the app is having issues, the web version might do the job.

If that doesn't help, try exporting the edited image as a DNG and share it with us. This format keeps your edits, so we can test it on our end. To do this, select the photos you want to export, then go to File > Export, choose DNG from the file formats list, and export it.

Thank you for your patience!

Alek

[EDPcorp]

Hi @Aleke . So I can export the file as DNG under the CUSTOM SETTINGS option. When I click on the file to open it after being exported it opens in Camera Raw Photoshop. I tried to save it as a .jpg from there but then the same issue happened - saved with no edits displaying.  I will try the web option you said, but before I do I need to know how syncing behaves. Ive had the syncing option paused on my desktop app for quite sometime. So my desktop app doesnt match whats in the cloud. When I resume syncing will the desktop take priority over the cloud or will the cloud items come rushing back into the desktop?  Because I want only whats on my desktop to exist and NOT whats in the cloud. Thanks for YOUR patience!

[Aleke]

Hey @EDPcorp! Sorry for the delayed response. I think it's safer to avoid the web option for now, as the cloud might try to sync everything.

Which version of Lightroom are you using? There's a new update from December—could you check if that helps? It would also be super helpful if you could share your System Info. You can find it under Help > System Info, then copy the text into a file and attach it here.

Thanks a ton!

Alek

[EDPcorp]

I tried to upload the DNG and when I click "POST" it deletes the file out of the upload. All it let me send apparently was the screen shot. Is there an email address I should send the DNG file to?

[EDPcorp]

Oh, and my system info:

Apple M3

16GB memory

MacOS Sequoia 15.1.1.

Over 150GB of storage remains free.

LR version 8.1

[Aleke]

Hi @EDPcorp! Thanks for the extra info. Could you explain what custom settings you used to export your image in Lightroom to keep the edits?

For sharing the DNG, if the file size is too big, you can use a link sharing site like Google Drive.

Thanks!
Alek

[EDPcorp]

Click here to download the file from dropbox

These were the custom settings:

Image type: DNG

File name: Original

and now that I think about it - I might have exported the file using "original" which gave me a CR3 format which is what I shot the photo as and it also gave me a xmp format which is what I think I put into photoshop that lead me to the work around I finally found. Again, I had a friend that sort of guided me through it but there was a lot of trial and error so I dont remember the exact work flow we did. 

[JohanElzenga]

Image type: DNG

If you export as DNG (or as Original), then the edits will not be applied to the (raw) pixels, but embedded in the metadata. That means that only other Adobe apps will be able to show the edits. Export in an RGB format (jpg, tiff, psd) if you want to apply the edits to the pixels.

[EDPcorp]

Yes of course. From the beginning of my time with LR Ive always exported as JPEG large. I simply tried the other formats to see if anything would help correct the bug LR seems to have. If you read back in the history of my conversation with Alek you'll see we are trying everything to correct this bug which only shows itself on just a handful of photos for no particular reason. Weird stuff.

[EDPcorp]

So ultimately since this LR bug isnt able to be corrected in LR is it fair to say LR engineers should try to improve this issue sooner than later so we dont have interrupted workflows or products? Any other ideas for a fix? Im all ears 🙂

[Aleke]

Hi @EDPcorp! It looks like the DNG file link has expired. Could you upload it again? Also, could you share a screenshot of your usual export settings?

I'm sorry for all the back and forth. It’s been tough to troubleshoot since we can't reproduce the issue, and you've mentioned it doesn't happen all the time.

Thanks for your patience!
Alek

[EDPcorp]

Hi Alek,

So after exporitng the file as Custom plus settings, then opening it in Photoshop, then saving it a specific way in photoshop I was able to preserve the edits. However, that is a long multi-step process that I dont understand - a friend helped me with that the other day.  Also, I wouldnt think I should have to do that considering I didnt have to do that with thousands of photos this past year!  I have attached here a DNG version and the jpeg version of the file having the challenges. I also attaached a screen shot as a reminder of what it should look like with edits. I hope we can figure it out - I really do enjoy lightroom but would hate to randomly run into one of these issues on an important client's project. I look forward to your reply.