[Simple Steps to Export your Photos

with Ben Willmore] [Ben Willmore]

So I have an image I want to share with friends, but the changes I've made in Lightroom

didn't affect the original file. So I'm going to need to export

a copy and give that to a friend. Let's look at how to export

and how to print. My original file didn't look

like this. I made it this nice

using Lightroom. If I share my original image

with someone else, they're not going to see

these changes. In order to get someone to see these,

I need to export my image, and to do that, I go to the File menu,

and I have a bunch of choices for exporting. Then usually you have to go to Export

for it to actually get to the settings you want to use,

and so let's take a look in there. In here, you'll find

that there's a multitude of settings. We'll just look

at a few of them for now. Here you can tell it

what folder you would like to export to,

and I currently have it set to export to my desktop. Clicking the Choose button

on the right side would allow you to choose an alternative. There are a bunch of other settings

you can set in here. Most of them are optional, though,

so let's just look at the important ones. If you want to rename the files,

you could do that here, but I find

the original names are usually fine. If I want to rename something,

I often do it afterwards. If you come down

to File Settings, here's where you choose the file format you use—

JPEG is the most popular, but some people will be asked

for other formats, so you have them available here. Then we have image sizing,

and this is where you mainly control how large of a picture

you're going to give people, because your digital camera

probably captured a pretty big image, and if you just want to email it

to a friend, to do casual sharing, you probably don't need

a cinema full-sized image. So let's type in

maybe 1,000 by 1,000 pixels to get it to just be an acceptable size

that's not huge, and then we can come in here

and make sure it's sharpened so it looks good

on somebody's screen. Most of the other settings are optional,

and then instead of hitting the Export button, which would export

this one file, I'm going to go

to the left side of my screen, where I find an Add button. If I click Add, I'm going to save this

as a preset, and I'm just going to create a name

that reminds me of the settings I'm using. Maybe I put in the width the image will be,

like a thousand pixels, and I put the file format, and then where

it's going to be saved. And I tell it where

to put this. You can organize them

into folders. I'll put it in User Presets,

and I"m going to hit Create. That's going to make a preset

so that I never have to return to this screen,

where you see all the settings. Instead, all of these settings

are incorporated into that preset. In fact, I know I'm going to have

to export images in the future at different sizes, so I might as well,

right now, come in here and make another preset—

maybe one for 2,000 pixels wide. And just hit the Add button

on the left side. And give that one a name. [typing sounds] And I might end up creating

four, five, or six presets, depending on how many different sizes

I typically need to save. At this point, it might feel

a little odd, but I'm not going to click

the Export button, and that's because I don't,

right now, want to export this individual file—I just wanted

to create the presets we've made. Instead, I'll click Cancel. And now, at any time,

I can select a single image, or I could select

a thousand images and go to the File menu. I can choose Export with Preset,

and I'll find my presets right down here. When I choose one of the presets,

it's going to instantly start exporting that file, and I'll see a progress bar

in the upper left. Once that progress bar is done,

it means the files are ready, and in this case, I exported it

to my desktop, so I know there's

a thousand pixel-wide JPEG file sitting there ready for me to email

or share with anyone. So now, let's move on

to printing and see how we can use

the same ideas, where we use templates

and presets to simplify the way we work. So to print, in the upper right,

you click on Print to get to the Print module. And in Print, just like with Export,

there are all sorts of settings you can use, and that's because Lightroom

wants to be as versatile as possible there, but at the same time, it wants you

to be able to make it simple by making templates and presets. So on the left side of my screen,

if I click, here we have the Template Browser,

and if I mouse over each one of these choices

without clicking, I'll see a preview above. When I click on one of them,

then the image on the right should change to show

what it would look like with the picture

I'm currently working on. If I find that one of these templates

is close to what I want, but not exactly, then that's when

I move to the right side of my screen and I modify the settings,

and in this case, I might want to modify

the layout a little bit. I'd like to make it

so the left and the right side are a little bit more even

and that this side over here has more white space. So I'm going to come over here

where it says Margins, and first, I'll get all these numbers

to be equals. We have an equal amount. You can either move the slider,

or there are numbers over here you can click on and type in

a specific setting. Then I wanted more space

on this side— well, that's the right side

of the sheet of paper. It might be the bottom of the picture,

but it's the right side of the paper. And that's exactly what I wanted. So once I've modified that,

I go to the left side of my screen again, where we have the template browser—

you see the plus sign? I'm going to create

a brand new template. And just like when we were using

Export Presets, here we can organize them

into various folders. I'll put mine in a folder

called User Templates, and I'll just give this a name. I'll call it White Border,

Large Bottom. Click Create, and now

if I look at the Template Browser and scroll all the way down,

I should find the preset I've just made here,

under User Templates. So in the future,

I browse my templates to see if there's anything close

to what I like, click on it when I find it,

and then on the right side of my screen, only modify the settings

that I need. When I'm done,

save a new template, and over time, you'll find

that you have a nice list of all the templates you need,

so you rarely need to look at the settings,

then actually make them up. So as you can see,

Lightroom has a multitude of settings for exporting and printing,

but you can simplify your life by creating presets,

and then instead of looking at all the settings,

you look at your presets. When you need to deviate

from them, click on the preset that's closest to what you need,

and then only change the settings that you need

to have different. If that's something

you're going to use again in the future, save a new preset,

and over time, you'll find that you rely more

on presets and look less at settings.