February 12, 2007
Export Presets
Proof that Adobe was listening during the Public Beta process is evident in many features of Lightroom, but one very useful one is Export Presets. Export Presets allows you one click access to your most common Export needs.
Invoking a preset is as simple as going to File Menu>Export Presets and then choosing the one you want. Lightroom ships with 3 sample presets: Burn Full Size Jpegs, Export to DNG and For E-mail. To see how to make our own we need to click the Export button, or CMD/CRTL Shift E. This will bring up the Export Dialog.
Looking from the top we can see the Preset drop down menu. In here we can see a list of available presets and the Save as New Preset command for creating a new preset. If you have an active preset selected there are also options for renaming and deleting the preset. If you change any setting in Export, you will see an Update preset option also.
The remainder of the Export dialog is similar to the Betas. Choose the file type etc. that you require for your export preset and work your way through the settings until the end. E.g. With ‘For E-mail’ you have jpg quality 50. The colour profile is set to sRGB profile and the file size is constrained to 640X640 pixels. Other options are Add Copyright Watermark, which prints the text from your IPTC Copyright field on the image and Minimize Embedded Metadata, which allows you to remove EXIF data from your file.
At the bottom is the Post Processing drop down menu. This gives access to inbuilt routines such as Disc Burning and Open in Photoshop, along with any of your own creation. To add an Export Action to this, choose the Go to Export Actions folder now option. This opens the folder required to add your own actions. The Applications/Program Files folder needs to be open also. From here you can Cmd-Opt drag your application to the Export Actions folder to create an alias, or right click and drag on PC, choosing ‘Create Shortcut’ from the menu. Once the shortcut/alias is created, the Export dialog needs to be closed and reopened for the new action to appear.
You can add anything to Export Actions from image editors to mailing apps. One important addition is the ability to add droplets. Photoshop allows you to turn Actions into Droplets so this provides a good way to have Photoshop batch process your Exports. Another use for Export Presets is for sites/online labs that provide an uploader. Flickr for example provide one, meaning you can upload directly to your Flickr account from Lightroom.