When sharing your images on social media, the right export settings in Adobe Lightroom can make a significant difference in quality, sharpness, and load times. Whether you’re posting on Instagram, Facebook, or Pinterest, using the correct settings ensures that your photos look their best. Here’s my step-by-step guide to exporting your images for social media from Lightroom.
1. Choose the right file format
For social media, JPEG is the best file format. It provides a good balance between quality and file size.
2. Set the correct color space
Always use sRGB as the color space. This ensures that your colors appear consistent across different devices and web platforms.
3. Resize for optimal resolution
Each social media platform has its preferred image size. Here are the recommended dimensions:
- Instagram: 1080px (width) × 1350px (height) for portrait images, or 1080px × 1080px for square images.
- Facebook: 1200px × 630px for feed posts.
- Pinterest: 1000px × 1500px (or a 2:3 aspect ratio) for best display.
- LinkedIn: 1200px × 627px for posts.
- Additionally, I have also found that 2048px on the longest edge works quite well, but not everyone agrees.
To set this in Lightroom:
- Under the Image Sizing section, check Resize to Fit and choose Long Edge or Width & Height.
- Enter the recommended pixel size.
- Set the Resolution to 72 ppi (pixels per inch), as it’s sufficient for online viewing. Again, I have found that 96ppi works well too.
4. Adjust image quality
Set Quality between 75-85% to maintain a balance between image sharpness and file size.
5. Sharpening for web display
Lightroom offers sharpening options under the Output Sharpening section, it’s not something that I actually use but you could try the following:
- Select Screen as the sharpening method.
- Choose Standard or High, depending on the level of detail in your image.
6. Remove metadata (Optional)
To protect your privacy and speed up upload times, uncheck “Include Metadata” or select “Copyright Only” in the Metadata section. This is helpful if you have people and places listed in your Meta that you don’t wish to reveal.
7. Watermarking (Optional)
If you want to protect your work, you can add a watermark under the Watermarking section. This is another contentious issue. I don’t think a watermark protects anything but will occasionally add a small one if I want my name to appear for a variety of different reasons. But mostly, I don’t bother. They are easily removed these days. But IF you choose to use one, I suggest making it small and in a corner or something, not splashed across the whole image.
8. Export and share!
Once your settings are in place, click “Export” and your image is ready to upload to social media! Don’t forget you can save these settings as a Preset so it’s quicker to export images for social media next time.
Using these optimized Lightroom export settings ensures your images look crisp and professional while maintaining a fast upload speed.
Happy sharing!