[eco1]

For those of you who work in Lightroom, what type of file (Jpeg or tiff) do you use when exporting your final edited photo? I shoot in Raw and do most of my work in LR with more detailed work being done in CS4.

I ask for a couple of reasons. Since LR is non-destructive, the images saved to your hard drive (and back ups saved to an external drive and disks) are non edited (correct?) unless you export the photo from LR. Do you save a couple of versions of the picture (high res for printing and low res for websites) or do you just say you will go back to the edited version in LR and adjust for the new format needed?

Any help is appreciated. Hopefully I am clear in my questions.

[bymy141]

For those of you who work in Lightroom, what type of file (Jpeg or tiff) do you use when exporting your final edited photo? I shoot in Raw and do most of my work in LR with more detailed work being done in CS4.

I ask for a couple of reasons. Since LR is non-destructive, the images saved to your hard drive (and back ups saved to an external drive and disks) are non edited (correct?) unless you export the photo from LR. Do you save a couple of versions of the picture (high res for printing and low res for websites) or do you just say you will go back to the edited version in LR and adjust for the new format needed?

Any help is appreciated. Hopefully I am clear in my questions.

Exporting from LR does not necessarily change the format.
You can also export a catalog for instance, and also you can exporting in DNG format, DNG format can contain the original RAW data plus the editing information.

My personal workflow looks like this:
1. Import all photos into LR (I shoot RAW only) with the LR import function.
- In a folder tree structure that is like this: year / month / date
2. Do the PP of all photos in LR.
3. Export all (good enough!) images as high res JPEG
- In a folder tree structure that is: year / month
- Depening upon the occasion (# of image files) an extra sub directory for that in the month
4. I do all printing, albums, web etc. with Picasa on the JPEG files
- Unless structural changes are needed, in that case I go back to LR.

I hope this helps.

= Bert

[Wheatfield]

If I am exporting from Lightroom to Photoshop for editing, I save as psd until it is time to send the file for printing, at which time it becomes a jpeg.
Think of Lightrooms "non destructive" editing as "this is what your picture would look like if you really edited it".
The end result of editing is always destructive, though since you are not altering the original file in Lightroom (and hopefully not in Photoshop either), you can still go back to it.

I save original raw files, edited and usually multi layered psds and final jpegs, whether sized for print output or web use.

[egordon99]

I NEVER Keep exported JPGs sitting around on my hard drive. Once they're uploaded to my website or printing site (Costco ), I delete them. I can ALWAYS re-create them if need be so why waste the space?

I use LR and I backup all the raw files, XMP files, and my Catalog file.

[Jim Royal]

For those of you who work in Lightroom, what type of file (Jpeg or tiff) do you use when exporting your final edited photo?

I export out of Lightroom only for printing, emailing, or web posting, and then delete the exported files when their purpose is completed. I don't keep exported copies of images hanging around, but rather go back to Lightroom when I need to print/share a photo again.

[philbaum]

I only edit and export the images i want to show on the net or to family/friends or for sale.

Thats a very small percentage of the total images i take.

If its for the net or email, its a low resolution jpeg, for framing, a high resolution large size usually.

i back up all my RAW files, XMP files and the catalog files. I could care less about the exported files because i can always make new ones. i save snapshots of the final images i like on the edited photos in the Develop module, usually. not always.

[Marc Sabatella]

I don't use LR, but ACDSee Pro, which has a very similar use model and workflow.

I don't export *any* converted version for most of my RAW files. They stay RAW, since like LR, ACDSee remembers what processing I've done and can always show me my RAW files with my processing intact, print directly from RAW, etc.

The only reason to generate a converted version would be to share it with someone who doesn't have the program you are using - eg, to post online, take to a print shop, email to friends & family or clients, etc. The specific *reason* you are generating the conversion should tell you what you need to know about what format/resolution/quality to go with.

For my purposes, a 1200x1800 medium-high quality JPEG of my "keepers" (maybe 30-40% of what I shoot) is almost always sufficient. They are small enough that I can keep as many of those as I want on my laptop while the original RAW file gets moved off to an external drive, but high enough resolution to view full screen on any computer I use, or to print 4x6" at 300dpi. It's these versions I upload to my web sites, email to others, and generally use for most purposes. On the rare occasions when I need a higher resolution file (eg, someone asks me for one so they can make a large print, or I want to have someone make such a print for me), then I just go back to the original RAW and generate the full size verion then (and I'll usually delete it soon afterwards).

However, if I were needing to do work in CS, then this obviously requires export to another format just to preserve my changes. That fact in itself would make me question just how important it was to do that sort of editing - I'd only do it for the images I really expected to need high resolution versions of for large prints. otherwise, I'd try as hard as I could to do everything I needed in LR. ACDSee has a similar thing, where Develop mode is like LR and Edit mode like CS (sort or more or less, as far as this goes), and I avoid Edit mode as mch as possible because I really don't like having to keep full size conversions of my images around for no good reason.

[Wheatfield]

However, if I were needing to do work in CS, then this obviously requires export to another format just to preserve my changes. That fact in itself would make me question just how important it was to do that sort of editing - I'd only do it for the images I really expected to need high resolution versions of for large prints.

I find this to be a curiously obstructive statement for some reason.

[eco1]

Thanks for the feedback everyone. Just to make sure I understand something, when you back up a catalogue, you are saving the instructions (edits) you made to various pictures as well, correct?

Again, thanks. This helps alot.

[Bart]

... when you back up a catalogue, you are saving the instructions (edits) you made to various pictures as well, correct?...

Correct. But not the pictures. Don't forget to backup those as well

[Marc Sabatella]

I find this to be a curiously obstructive statement for some reason.

Not meant to be. We just have different priorities, as we've discussed before. I'm all about trying to do as much as I can with as little effort as possible, whereas you have no qualms about spending the extra effort involved in moving outside the parametric image editing realm to do whatever extra processing you feel is necessary. I'll go there when necessary too, but only the rare few images where I feel it is worth my while. Hence my statement, which was meant only to describe *my* feelings, not to tell someone else *they* shouldn't want to leave the parametric realm. But FWIW, I would think it a given that a lot of LR users feel similarly to me, or they wouldn't be as high on using LR in the first place.

[WerTicus]

in photoshop when you work on a RAW file the settings you used are saved into the file, its not destructive though.

think of it like adjusting the timer and focus and colour settings on an enlarger than touching the negative

I save out JPG's from the RAW and keep the raw. HDD space is too cheap not to keep everything.