So you have just finished editing your images and are ready to send them to your gallery, post on the socials, or even send to a print vendor. But how?! Well, I am going to give you a step-by-step guide to working with Lightroom! But before you start reading, if you are a visual learner (like me!), know that I have a YouTube video available if that suits you better!

Getting Started

1. First, make sure you are in the Develop module inside of Lightroom (you should already be here if you have been editing)
2. Select the image or images that you are wanting to export
3. On a PC, right click and select Export
4. Choose Export again from the sub-menu
5. This will open a new window/box

Export Location

Now is the moment to decide where you are going to send these images. Are you sending them to the desktop? Emailing a copy of one image to a client or yourself? Burning them to a CD? (P.S. – do we even do CDs anymore!? I guess some do…ok, ok, let’s get back on track.)

For this tutorial let’s say you are exporting to your desktop.

1. Choose Hard Drive in the “Export To” box at the top
2. Next, export to Specific Folder
3. Click “Choose” and choose desktop
4. Click the Subfolder box and type what you want to name the folder that you are exporting these images to.
5. Leave the “Ask what to do” selected for existing images

You are getting there! But if you are bored out of your mind reading this, pop over and just watch the video.

File Naming

Now you can totally skip this next step and leave the images named as the default, but I like to name mine specifically for ease of finding them later on. If you want to name yours, then here is what you do:

1. Check the “Rename To” box
2. Here is where I opt to choose “Custom Name – Sequence”
3. Use what you want here, but I name mine MMP (for Mint Magnolia Photography of course)
4. Then I begin my sequence at 1
5. This is especially easy for me when my clients have 50+ images in their galleries and we are working on print orders, then they can say “I want to order images 4, 26, and 52. Make sense?

For exporting images purposes, I am going to skip the video section in the export box for now and move along to the File Settings Box.

File Settings

In the File Setting section you will be able to select the type of file you will export, i.e., JPEG, PSD, DNG, TIFF, Original

I choose JPEG because this is all that I send my clients in their online galleries and for their digital downloads. Then I slide my quality up to 100.

Image Sizing

You can resize to fit specific criteria for what you are doing with the image, but I always select 300 pixels per inch (on the right side of this section) This is what my fine art print vendor requests and they have super high quality prints. So if it’s good enough for them, then it’s good enough for everyone!

Output Sharpening

Here is the section where you can sharpen for screen, for matte paper, or glossy paper.

Metadata

Here is the section where you will choose what metadata will be embedded into your image, but what’s the difference in them?

• Copyright Only – prevents Lightroom from writing anything other than what you have included in the Copyright section of your metadata template when importing images
• Copyright & Contact Info Only – includes the above info plus any data you have added into the Creator field of the metadata template when importing
• All except Camera and Camera Raw info – This will include every single thing you have done in Lightroom except your camera settings and camera make and model.
• All Metadata – pretty self explanatory, but it is ALL THE THINGS. I can only think there would be a specific reason you want to share every thing…might as well just give them a key to your house (KIDDING! Or am I?).

Watermarking

Here is where you can select your watermark that you want applied to the image. If you are uploading to a client gallery for digital download then you will not want to add your watermark to the image, but if you are sharing to social media you might want it on there. This is personal preference, of course. Here is an example of my watermark on a photo for reference (plus, HOW sweet is this pinky promise?!).

Post-Processing

Under post-processing is where you will choose what happens after the export is complete. You can “Do Nothing” which will keep you in Lightroom to continue working, or it will provide other options to open the exported images in other applications. Totally your call, but mine almost always stays on “Do Nothing”

Export!

You are done! Just click Export and viola! Let Lightroom work and export those images to where you have chosen

Great job getting through it! You will be able to do this in your sleep before you know it! Until then, just go save my video to your favorites!

For more tips on life, business, and photography, make sure you bookmark Mint Magnolia Photography and head on over to the blog!

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