Today’s Question: The other day I took a snapshot with my iPhone that I wanted to share. The photo was too dark, so I decided to brighten it a bit and add some Clarity in Lightroom Classic. I exported the photo to my hard drive using Image Format: Original. When I attached the photo to the email, it was still too dark, not at all as it appeared in Lightroom Classic. Eventually, I tried exporting it with Image Format set to JPEG. The export worked fine. What’s going on?
Tim’s Quick Answer: When you select the “Original” option for the Image Format setting when exporting a photo from Lightroom Classic, you are exporting a copy of the original file without any adjustments. If you want to have the adjustments included in the exported file, you’ll need to choose a specific image format from the popup, not the “Original” option.
More Detail: Admittedly, it can be a little confusing when you export an image from Lightroom Classic and the adjustments are not included. But this is only an issue if you choose the “Original” option from the Image Format popup in the File Settings section of the Export dialog. That option exports a copy of the original image as it was captured, with no adjustments or other metadata updates applied.
If you want to include adjustments in the exported image, you’ll need to choose a specific file format other than “Original”. That is true even if you are exporting an image that was captured as a JPEG and you want the exported copy to be a JPEG. In this case if you choose “Original” the adjustments from the Develop module will not be included in the exported file, but if you choose “JPEG” from the Image Format popup the exported image will include the adjustments. This is true even though in both cases you would be exporting a JPEG image in this example.
So, the “Original” option is for exporting a copy of the image as it came from the camera, while choosing a specific file format will create a copy that does include your adjustments from the Develop module.
