my lightroom workflow part 4–exporting photos

so here is my fourth and final installment of my lightroom workflow series on how i export my photos. in case you missed it, here are the first three installments.

•  https://mindingmynest.com/photography/my-lightroom-workflowimporting-and-selecting-photos/
• https://mindingmynest.com/photography/my-lightroom-workflow-part-2-organizing-my-photos-in-collections/
• https://mindingmynest.com/photography/my-lightroom-workflow-part-3basic-editing/

before i show you my export workflow, i thought i would share with you something that took me a minute to get my head around in lightroom.  and that is, whenever you make adjustment to a photo, those changes are not reflected in your original image on your computer.  all of those adjustments are data that resides solely in lightroom.  there is not ‘SAVE’ button in lightroom.  in order to have a digital file that reflects the adjustments you’ve made, you have to ‘EXPORT’ a brand new image file.  and i promise it’s really not a big deal.

so here i have a collection of shots i took this morning around my backyard…how we are seeing ever so subtle signs of the magic that is yet to come.  these are the keepers – the ones i’ve picked.

so here is the first photo that i edited.  and i really like it and will most probably use it in my blog post.  so what i’m going to next is rate this photo.

now i would just like to pause here for a sec and reiterate… this is what works for me.  you can go crazy with rating with stars and colors and get a elaborate as you want.  but the thing for me is, even if i went to the trouble of setting up all these different kinds of color codes or star ratings, there is no way in hell that i would ever remember.  i mean half the time i can’t remember where i set down my car keys, so i know i would never be able to remember that red is for this and blue is for that.

so this is what i do.  if i really like how a photo turned out post-processing and i think i want to either a) use it online somewhere or b) print it out, i will give it five stars.  that’s it.  and you can see now under my photo where it has the white flag {pick} and five stars {really like it and will probably use it}.

so next i went through and edited the rest of the photos in this collection.  and i did the same thing for the shots i really liked.  now back here in the library module, you can see on the thumbnails the ones that have five stars.

out of these seven ‘picks’ i have given four of them a five star rating.  these are the ones i will use in my blog post.  so the next thing i will do is, using the filter bar, filter for photos that have a five star rating.  and all i do is click on the fifth star and lightroom does it automatically for me.

see?  so easy.  now the next thing i do is select all these photos by pressing CNTL+A on my keyboard.  then, i will click on the ‘Export’ button to send them into the appropriate folder.

{i don’t know why it shows ‘Export Catalog’ on my screenshot.  on my screen it just says ‘Export…’}

anyway, here is the export dialog box and just really quickly i though i’d show you how i set this up.

it is here at the export dialog that you determine the final outcome of your image file. whether you are exporting a digital image for blog post (as in this case) or for another website like flickr or maybe a portfolio site.  or if you are exporting with plans of printing them out either at home or uploading them to walgreens or shutterfly or wherever.  this is where you tell lightroom what you want to do with your image.

for this example, i am going to export them for my blog.  so i select the choose folder option and choose a new name for the exported file.  here is a screen shot of how i set up my custom name template.

next i set lightroom to export .jpg files with sRGB colorspace.  please don’t ask me to explain about colorspace.  all i know is that sRGB is the standard for internet viewing.

the next section involves image resizing. so the maximum width for my personal blog is 640 pixels.  so i check the resize to fit box and tell it that i want the long edge of my photo to be 640 pixels wide and to have a resolution of 100 pixels per inch.  and please don’t ask me about resolution.  all i know is that for the internet, the max you will get on any screen is 72 pixels per inch, so it really does no good to have it be much more than that.  all you get is bigger files that take up valuable hard drive space.

anyway, those are the only changes i’ll make here in this dialog box.  i’ve already sharpened them in post-processing so no need to do it again.  i don’t include meta data in my blog photos, i don’t watermark them, and don’t apply any further post-processing before export.  so the next thing i do is click ‘Export’.

now here is where i will tell lightroom into which folder i would like these photos exported.  as you can see i have an entire windows library for my 2013 blog post photos.  i have already created a folder for this blog post entitled 09272013 fall around the house.

and so i will double-click on that folder and then click ‘Select Folder’.  and so now when i got to my windows explorer, i can see that my four photos are there ready for me to upload into my blog post.

i guess i should add here that the way i organize the intricate maze of folders and sub-folders on my computer makes my daughter crazy.  but it’s an intuitive system for me that has been honed by 15 years of data management at my ‘real job’.  but this blog post is already too long and too boring, so i’ll save that topic for another day when i don’t have laundry to fold and a litter box to clean out.

once again, i’ve created a video so you can see how fast and easy this is in real life.

so just wanted to say thank you to my ‘photography’ friends for the nice feedback you on this process.  and also a big thanks to all of the rest of you for following along with me on these boring kinds of blog posts.

anyway, hope you all have a wonderful weekend.  my girl is coming home and we are heading off to the state fair tonight. can’t wait!  been dreaming about corndogs and spiral cut french fries for a month. 🙂

love, kelly