Saving a zoomed in frame as a photo

[mw5375]

In Lightroom, when a photo has been zoomed, can that zoomed image be saved as a photo? (by zoomed I mean, clicking on an image in Library using the magnifying class and blowing up the image - cropping does not seem to provides the same detail, plus it is difficult to find the part of the image that needs expanding......thanks

[Rob_Cullen · Accepted solution]

Zoom+ does magnify an image on the screen so you see only a portion of it, but it does nothing to select that view as a new photo. Only the crop tool can achieve that.

So you might- 1. Create a Virtual Copy {Ctrl+'} then 2. Press 'R' for the crop tool, 3. Crop to the desired area.

Cropping DOES LOSE PIXELS! in an exported photo, so you cannot crop without losing detail.

[Conrad C]

mw5375 wrote:

cropping does not seem to provides the same detail

Develop and Library both render from the same source image, so no detail is "lost" either way. In fact the Library image is usually lower quality; for example, Library uses an sRGB preview while Develop is rendered direct from the raw original plus Lightroom adjustments. If you set the noise reduction and sharpening options properly in Develop, you should be able to enhance the detail in Develop as much as needed.

mw5375 wrote:

it is difficult to find the part of the image that needs expanding

Here's a tip that can help with that. When you are zoomed in Library, open the Navigator panel. It will show you a rectangle representing the part of the image that's zoomed in. Use that as a guide, then switch to Develop and crop it the same way.

wobertc wrote:

Cropping DOES LOSE PIXELS!…you cannot crop without losing detail

Cropping loses pixels, but details are not lost. The amount of detail is the same. An image can appear to have less detail after cropping when the remaining area is enlarged to be the same apparent viewing size as the image before cropping.

[mw5375]

thanks for the feedback - navigator panel hint helped

MJW