Lightroom 3 Help with saving photos

<p>I feel like such a dud - I have spent ages trying to save the changes to one of my images and I just cannot. Unlike P/S there is no 'save' or 'save as', after you have edited your pic and made the changes.<br>

I eventually figured out that you have to 'export' the photo after you have edited it. I worked out how to create a new folder and set up the export function. This worked and the pic ended up in the new folder - but hey presto - none of the changes appear. It appears in the new folder in its original form, without the many obvious changes that I made to it. What on earth am I doing wrong?<br>

I am sure there is a simple explanation but could somebody please explain? It is very frustrating - I have a new pic I need to put up on my website but just cannot get it to recognise the changes. I was using NX2 with a little bit of photoshop. A friend suggested Lightroom, so I went ahead and bought it but so far only frustration.</p>

<p>Thank you somebody.</p>

<p>Philip<br>

philipsuttonphotography.com</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Oh yes - I thought I would add this. The pic with the changes is still present on my screen on L/R3, which is just great. Means it has still kept the changes I made, but how do I get the newly changed image into a folder to upload it onto my website???</p>

<p>Philip</p>

<p>Some changes made in LR are almost invisible on certain types of exports. Specifically, if you did some noise reduction and/or sharpening at the pixel level of a full resolution photo (say, 4000 pixels on the long side), and then export the image at greatly decreased resolution (say, 700 pixels on the long side - as required for photo.net posting), the changes that you made will be difficult to see.</p>

<p>My suggestion is to make some blatantly obvious change to an image (e.g., a major change in color temperature), then export that and see if you can see the change in the exported version.</p>

<p>Tom M</p>

<p>I did make very obvious changes, the two images look totally different. I can't understand why a simple thing like saving the changes to an image can be so difficult. I need to be able to access the changed image on screen to upload to the website - but it seems difficult. On P/S or NX2 it is so simple. However the basic layout of L/R and its ease of operation seems very good. I would like to persevere with it, but just need a bit of help on this one.</p>

<p>Philip</p>

<p>Lightroom changes are non-destructive and depending how you have it configured either incorporated into a DNG file or as a sidecar XMP file. The changes are always there until you make a new change. It even records every time you print an image as a "change" even though the underlying image has not been changed at all. If you are in the Develop module you can see the record of every single change you have made to the image (this only applies to Lightroom edits; if you export an image to Photoshop for pixel editing, it will return an edited file to Lightroom but won't tell you what was done to it). You want to put the image up on a website as a JPG? There are two ways to do this (either from the Print module using the 'print to file' command or through Library module via the 'export' command). Both do essentially the same thing and what you see in Lightroom should be what you get in your JPG. Remember to scroll down the 'export dialogue box' and make the appropriate selections. It's really not all that difficult.</p>

<p>Alan - Bingo</p>

<p>You explained it so well - have it nailed now. It's on my website and all done.<br>

It seems a rather funny process doesn't it - compared to the 'save' or 'save as' on most other programmes. However it won't take one long to get used to this process I guess.</p>

<p>Thanks a lot</p>

<p>Philip</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Lightroom changes are non-destructive and depending how you have it configured either incorporated into a DNG file or as a sidecar XMP file.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Lightroom changes are saved in text files in the default case, which is neither of the methods mentioned above.</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p> through Library module via the 'export' command</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Export is not limited to the Library module.</p>

<p>For the original poster - can you give a screen shot of the Export dialogue that comes up when you click on export? Also, check that the image actually looks how you want it to look when you export, i.e., make sure that if you are exporting from the Develop module, that you have not clicked back to the beginning of the history. Also, try using the Lightroom export presets to see if that changes anything - if it does, then your settings in the Export dialogue are the issue.</p>

<p>The reason it looks the same is that you exported in format "Original", which tells Lightroom to generate a copy of the original image data tied to the new metadata. If you want to see the changes, you need to export as JPEG or TIFF or whatever.</p>

<p>I highly recommend reading <a href="http://www.lightroomforums.net/showthread.php?8288-The-Starter-Kit">The Starter Kit</a> from Lightroom Forums.</p>

@Jeff: "Lightroom changes are saved in text files in the default case"

 

They are saved in the LR database, not in text files.

 

@Phillip: The absence of an explicit save in a usability improvement. Failing to save is a very common user error.

<p>@Philip - many new Lightroom users experience the same issue - there is a bit of a training curve learning LR but it is well worth it. One of the most common LR questions that people have is "What is the save button?"</p>

<p>You might consider watching some of the training videoss online. I would start at <a href="http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshoplightroom/resources.html">http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshoplightroom/resources.html</a>. I know that these were a huge help when I first started with LR.</p>