Exporting from Lightroom

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Size and Export Images from Lightroom for Facebook

Lightroom offers a huge amount of options for saving and exporting images.  For Facebook, you’ll want to export images at the highest resolution it will accept; 2048 pixels is what Facebook recommends.

So first, you’ll have to tell Lightroom where you want to save your image. Lightroom offers a lot of choices, one of the being to save the new resulting image into the same folder as the original. It can be a good idea to keep the original and your final copies in the same space or you can create a subfolder to the original and label it “For Facebook.” Another option is to define a “specific folder” for your outputs. This allow you to send all exported images for Facebook to the same location on your hard drive. This also works well to automatically save files into an online storage cloud storage such as into a Dropbox, iCloud, or OneDrive folder on your disk.

File format

Further down on the Export screen, you get to choose the file format you want to make the exported image. For internet purposes, you would mostly choose JPEG as the desired file format. JPEG is a compressed format which allows faster transmission of images, so most internet based platforms used this format to store photos.

With the JPEG format, you also have to choose the Quality level. The lower the quality, the more compression artifacts you might see in the final image, in exchange for a lower file size. In most cases, values around 80-90% will not show critical changes over the full 100%, and only in rare occasions you should go below 60%.

Color profile

The color profile defines how many (and which) colors can be accurately store. The smaller a color profile is, the less color information it contains, but also the smaller the file sizes will also be. sRGB is the best choice for all images that are meant to be displayed on electronic screens, from large computer monitors, to smart phones, on your website, or on Social Media.

Sizing your images

The final section you need to address before exporting your images is the resizing options. For images you plan to upload to the internet – be it your blog, to Facebook or to Instagram – you probably don’t want to upload the full resolution of 16 or 24 megapixels. As previously mentioned, Facebook only accepts up to 2048 pixels on the wide side, and if you upload larger images they will automatically be downscaled. So it is preferable to save the file in the recommended size, to save upload time.

With these settings, you could now export you image for sharing on Facebook. There are a few other sections like Output Sharpening (you can choose “Screen” and “Standard”, and compare the results to a version without output sharpening to see the difference) or adding a Watermark to your images automatically.

“This is why we work hard and continue to struggle for our hope is in the living God, who is the Savior of all people and particularly of all believers.” 1 Timothy 4:10 (NLT)

Creativity isn’t option, not if we’re serious, as Christ Followers, about conforming to the image of Christ. Creativity is the natural, supernatural by-product of a Spirit-filled life. Let’s embrace creativity and entrepreneurship as a means of glorifying God and loving others.

  

Be Blessed and be a blessing!

All Photographs in this post/blog © Cheryl Howard