Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2

In a nutshell, exporting is the way to apply the changes you have made in Lightroom, everything from Develop adjustments to keywords, to new copies of your imported photos. The key word to keep in mind is copies. Lightroom is not applying these changes to your source photos.

Just to review the workflow, when photos are imported into Lightroom a record is created in the Lightroom catalog file (meaning the database). As you work with those photos inside of Lightroom more data is added to the catalog records for those photos. So the export process is how you get the data out of the catalog file and apply it to a new copy of your source files.

For example, let’s say you import a single photo from your camera’s memory card into Lightroom. In the Library module you added some keywords and added your contact information in the Metadata panel. In the Develop module you set the white balance, adjusted exposure, applied a new crop ratio and boosted the saturation. All of that work is written as a set of instructions inside the Lightroom catalog file as you work. There is no Save function. As you move a slider or apply a keyword you are literally writing data to the Lightroom catalog in real time.

Once you are finished working you might want to email a copy of that photo to someone or upload a copy to an online print service or deliver to a client. This is where the export process comes into play.

If you select that photo and click the Export button in the Library module, or go to File > Export, you are presented with the Export dialog box.

The Export dialog is where you define the parameters for the type of copy you want to create to suit the purpose you have in mind. You wouldn’t use the same settings to send a copy via email as you would for creating a copy to be printed, right?

The key setting on the Export dialog is the file format choice you make in the File Settings panel. This defines what type of copy you are going to create. Lightroom can save out copies in JPEG, TIF, PSD, DNG and original. The file format you choose will determine what other options are available for creating that type of copy.

Once you configure the export dialog as needed, and click the Export button at the bottom of the panel, Lightroom begins the process of creating a copy of the selected source file based on the Export dialog settings and then applying any Lightroom adjustments to that copy. So you see, you are not so much getting your photos out of Lightroom (since they were never in there), but rather you are getting the work you did in Lightroom out in the form of a new file.