Exporting Revealed
Pages: 1, 2, 3, 4
Image settings
If you choose JPEG, PSD, or TIFF as a format, you are presented with several Image Settings options. Here is a summary of your choices:
Color Space
Choose between sRGB (narrower space, used for the Web and many desktop printers), AdobeRGB (wider space, commonly used in image editing applications), and ProPhoto RGB (wider color space, but not widely supported).
Bit Depth
If you select the TIFF or PSD file formats (but not JPEG), you can choose between 8 or 16 bits/component. It's best to use 8 bits unless you are planning to perform more image processing in another application where the extra bits give you more data to work with.
Resolution
Enter a resolution as pixels per inch or pixels per centimeter. The default is 240 pixels per inch.
Constrain Maximum Size
If this option is left unchecked, Lightroom exports your image at its original pixel dimensions. Checked, you can set a maximum size for the Width or Height in a unit of your choice (circled).
Add Copyright Watermark
Check this option and Lightroom adds the name that's entered in image's IPTC copyright field to the lower left corner of every image (circled).
Minimize Embedded Metadata
If you don't select this option, Lightroom includes all the metadata entered in the IPTC fields. Select it and only copyright metadata will be included with the exported photos.
Metadata
Regardless of which file format you choose, you'll have a choice of how keyword metadata is organized. If you check the box to Write Keywords as Lightroom Hierarchy (circled), applications that don't support this option will still display your keywords, albeit without hierarchical structure.
Post-processing
You can instruct Lightroom to do several things after export is complete.
Do nothing
If you select this, after export you'll return to the Lightroom module in which you were previously working.
Lightroom Interpolation
When Lightroom resizes for export (or, for that matter, for a print or web gallery) you don't get a choice of interpolation methods as you do with Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, where your choice is based on whether you are sampling up or down. What is Lightroom doing...and is it good? I asked Lightroom's "father," Mark Hamburg, and this is what he said:
"Lightroom is using a Lanczos kernel interpolation method. But the really big difference is it resamples in linear space. Depending on the image, this can create a huge difference. For example, with a Photoshop resampling, if you look closely, you can see a darkening around edges, because Photoshop doesn't generally work in linear.
Which results one likes for resampling are in part a matter of taste and also depend on the image content. In general, Lightroom should be at least as good as Photoshop and in some cases—such as upsampling—it should be clearly better."
Show in Finder/Explorer
If you select this option, after export, the files are displayed in an Explorer window (Windows) or Finder (Mac OS) window. I love this export option, and use it all the time. It saves me from the "where the heck did that file go?" frustration.
