Exporting from Lightroom CC

[markkna]

I'm new to Lightroom and am looking for some practical advice on exporting images from Lightroom for attachment to email and for use on the web and in social media, especially Facebook and Instagram.  In particular, I'm looking for practical guidance on the "file settings" and "image sizing" fields of the export function.  I've sourced  a few articles on the web but all seem to offer different advice on such matters!   Can someone help me with this, please?

[F. McLion · Accepted solution]

What setting exactly are you unsure about?

For web/social media make sure to always use sRGB color space, jpg with a quality setting of about 60 and adjust the size in pixels as you like. Leave the file size and the resolution alone, at its default of 'not limited' and 240.

[markkna]

Thanks for your answer. The settings I refer to are those you've

mentioned, in particular "quality" under "file settings", and "resize to

fit", number of pixels/inches and resolution under "image sizing". Some

commentators say leave your quality at 100 and don't resize as social media

will compress your image anyway, others say avoid social media's harsh

compression algorithms by resizing yourself; another provides different,

but very specific, resizing specifications for each of Facebook (1200x628),

Google (800x800), Instagram (1080x1080), Pinterest . . Twitter . .

LinkedIn; some recommend resizing and inserting a particular number of

pixels for height/width, then also specify a resolution of X ppi when, I

understand (but may be way wrong), specifying a particular ppi is

irrelevant in those circumstance i.e. pixels per square inch are relevant

when you're specifying a size in inches I admit to being pretty much a

beginner in such matters but it's hard to find the common threads through

this . . .

[F. McLion]

IMHO, above a quality of 90 there is not really any real gain .. except the larger filesize . I'd say for a jpg 90 is top quality. For large prints, I may use 100, but anyway prefer TIFF if the print shop accepts it.

Some sites reject your jpg if it is too large while others scale down automatically. I always resize myself to stay in control.

Regarding resolution x ppi ... you got that right

[markkna]

Thanks very much F.Lion. You've been very succinct.

[cmgap]

In addition to McLion's suggestions, you may want to watermark your images when publishing online. Other best practices are to look up each social media outlets specifications so that you are meeting the minimum size requirements... you can see one of many cheat sheets here: https://makeawebsitehub.com/social-media-image-sizes-cheat-sheet/

Adobe has created a number of helpful knowledge base articles that will get you well on your way: https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/how-to/publish-photos-social-media.html

Publish photos to social media 

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC tutorials

Share photos on Facebook | Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC tutorials

To email your images:

How to publish photos from Photoshop Lightroom to Adobe Stock and social media