Chapter 19: Exporting an Image
As you work with digital images, at some point you’ll reach a point where saving a file is a good idea. It might be an in-progress save to capture work to date as you edit a photo. Perhaps it’s to prepare a file for printing or sharing on the Internet. Or maybe export to social media. Luminar offers many different options for saving and exporting images to meet your needs.
When you are ready to export a finished image, you can choose Export...
Step 1: To Save your files as a picture that you can post or send it somebody, go to the File menu and choose Export.
Step 2: A dialog box will appear that will let you choose where you want to save your photo and what format you want to save it as.
Luminar can save a variety of popular formats including JPEG, TIFF, and Photoshop.
Step 3: To save a file you can share with family, clients, or upload to the web, select JPEG and adjust the quality slider to about 85.
Step 4: Click the Save button to write the file.
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Tip:
High-quality Archives. To archive an photo, save it as a TIFF file. TIFF files preserve all the details and colors in an image and are great for printing.
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Saving an Image File
You may need to export multiple files for other tasks. Maybe it's to post online, to drop into a presentation, or to collaborate with others. When you export a file, you can save in a variety of file formats including JPG, TIFF, and PNG.
- Chose the image or images you want to save.
- From the main menu choose File > Export or click the Share image button in the upper right corner and choose Export to image…. A new dialog box opens.
- Choose a location to store the saved file on your hard drive, an attached disk, or using a Cloud storage provider.
- Select from the following optional items:
(When exporting multiple images you may need to mouse click on the options box in the lower left corner of the export dialog box to see these options.)- Format. Choose from eight different file formats. Some options like TIFF and JPEG may offer additional settings for control over compression and bit depth.
- Sharpen. Choose whether you want to Sharpen the exported file. This can increase details in the edges of the image and overcome some of the compression artifacts of formats like JPEG.
- Resize. You can choose to export at the original size, or to enter a new dimension for the image to fit its long side or short side.
- Color Space. You can choose from 3 color spaces for output.
- sRGB is the narrowest color gamut, but most compatible with the web
- Adobe RGB is a common color space used in computer graphics and many software applications.
- ProPhoto RGB is the widest gamut and supports the broadest range of colors. ProPhoto RGB is the only color space that can contain all the colors captured in a raw format photo.
- Quality. Some formats (like JPEG) allow you to assign a Quality setting which will affect overall compression and the final file size.
If you are exporting a single file, you can change its name to something more descriptive at the top of the dialog box. If you are exporting multiple images, you won't see this option, and the exported files will retain their original file names.
Supported File Formats
The following types of file can be created in Luminar.
- JPEG (.jpg). The Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) format is most often used to display continuous-tone images (such as photos) on the Internet. Most digital cameras use JPEG because it provides excellent compression; the maximum setting provides comparable image quality to much larger file formats like TIFF. Occasionally, the print industry (especially newspapers) will use JPEGs. JPEG is a lossy compression, which means that some data is discarded during compression of the image. JPEGs should not be used as an archive or production file format. You should generally only save JPEG files once because re-saving continues to discard data and lower image quality. If you have acquired an image as a JPEG in your camera, be sure to save the edited document as a native Luminar file.
- PNG (.png). The Portable Network Graphics format provides lossless compression. It is increasingly common on the Internet, as most web browsers support it. The PNG format was created to be a patent-free alternative to GIF. Its major advantage is the PNG-24 file, which allows for 24-bit images (8 bits per channel) and embedded transparency. It is technically superior to GIF.
- TIFF (.tif). The Tagged-Image File Format is one of the most common and flexible formats available. It is widely used to exchange files between applications and computer platforms, and has a long legacy of compatibility. Additionally, TIFF is one of the formats to work in a bit depth of 8 or 16 bits per channel.
- JPEG 2000 (.jp2). The JPEG 2000 format is an update released in the year 2000 from the Joint Photographic Experts Group committee. Its intent was to replace the original JPEG format. It uses a newer wavelet-based method of image compression which is more efficient.
- Photoshop (.psd). The Photoshop format is a common format used in the computer graphics industry. Skylum cannot write a layered file, but can export a file that can be opened by Adobe Photoshop and other software packages which support the format.
- PDF (.pdf). The Portable Document Format (PDF) is a file format invented by Adobe and was intended to be an extension of PostScript. A PDF can be viewed on virtually every operating system and portable media player or phone. The PDF is an open standard, which means that the computer industry is able to create applications that can read or write PDFs without paying Adobe additional fees. This openness led to the quick adoption of PDF, and it is utilized online extensively.
