How Does Lightroom Export Work for Instagram? March 16, 2021December 15, 2022 Vikas Solutions Social media is a powerful and efficient tool for individuals and businesses looking to increase their presence online. If you’re juggling your personal Instagram brand, you’ll know how important it is to fine-tune your photos before sharing them publicly. Adobe Lightroom is one of the most popular post-production tools used by photographers these days. You can use it to build your collections, create slideshows, print, sync and share your photos directly on Instagram. But hold on, dealing with photos in huge numbers will mean duplicate & similar photos come into play. The solution? PictureEcho! Delete Duplicate Photos in Adobe Lightroom Using PictureEcho PictureEcho is a harbinger of strong security principles How to Export Lightroom Photos to Instagram? Exporting Lightroom photos to Instagram is pretty easy. Just select the photos you want to export. Open the Lightroom Export dialog by clicking on the File menu, and selecting Export. You can also use the keyboard shortcut Shift + Ctrl on Windows or Shift + Cmd on Mac. In the subsequent dialog, you’ll need to configure your export settings. We’ll discuss each of those parameters below and help you get the most out of it. Change Aspect Ratio Aspect Ratio is the ratio of the width and height of an image or video. It is usually expressed as x:y (where x denotes how wider an image is and y measures its height). Since 2017, we know that Instagram does not restrict its users to the 1:1 aspect ratio. It supports multiple aspect ratios (given below): Square: 1:1 Landscape: 1.91:1 Portrait: 4:5 Versatile: 4:3 / 3:4 In all the above aspect ratios, the maximum 1200px resolution is supported except for the Landscape mode. The maximum resolution for landscape is 1080px. You can use the Crop Overlay tool (that resembles a little square) and then select the Aspect option to make your image Instagram-ready dimension. In the subsequent drop-down box, select your desired dimension, or use the Custom option to specify a custom dimension. If the cropping didn’t work as expected, use the Original option to set the original aspect ratio. Instagram Maximum Image Resolution There are conflicting opinions about the maximum image resolution for Instagram images. Instagram supports portrait images up to 1200px and landscape images up to 1080px. On Retina screens, it can display up to 1350px although there is no official word about it. Color Space Lightroom Export dialog gives you the freedom to choose what color space you can export your images to. For example, for printing your images, Adobe RGB is a better choice as it offers wider color space while sRGB is more appropriate for a digital copy. RGB offers the most consistent experience and better compatibility with modern devices. We recommend sRGB for Instagram. Image Sharpening Image sharpening is a technique used by professional photographers that involves improving both the resolution and acutance of an image. To sharpen an image, you will need to increase the image resolution. To improve the acutance, you’ll need to add more contrast. Lightroom gives users an option to sharpen their images before exporting. Check the Sharpen for option and select the screen option from the drop-down box. Image Metadata Did you know that when you take a photo with your digital camera, a lot of information is saved about you that can trace back your identity? Your camera saves the location information where the photo was shot, your device configurations (such as lens, camera model, etc), date-time stamp, and much more. Although Instagram strips out this information much like any other popular social media-sharing platform, if you’re planning to upload your photos elsewhere, it’s best to remove the metadata yourself. While exporting your photos, make sure to mark the checkboxes Remove personal info and Remove location info. Lightroom to Instagram Export- Other Best Practices While exporting your Lightroom image to Instagram, make sure not to enlarge it to avoid potential upscaling issues. If your photo is under 1200px/ 1080px, enlarging it further can actually distort it. Check the “Don’t enlarge” feature. It’s also best to set the Quality slider no less than 80%. The idea is to get a balance between image quality and output size. The recommended aspect ratios to use are 1:1, 1.91:1, 4:5 and 4:3/ 3:4. Your preferred image format should be JPEG and Color Space RGB. Best Lightroom Export Settings for Instagram Stories Instagram Stories is a unique feature that lets you post photos and videos that vanish after 24 hours. Instagram launched this feature 5 years ago and today, over 500 million people use it every day. Here are some best practices to optimize your Lightroom photos for Instagram Stories: Recommended aspect ratio: 9:16 is the recommended aspect ratio for Insta Stories (resolution: 1080 x 1920px). JPEG is the recommended file format for image stories. If you’ve to post a video story, make sure it’s up to 15 seconds long. Bonus Tip: Finding Lightroom Duplicate Images A duplicate file is an identical version of an image. It may be stored in the same directory as the original file, or a different directory on your hard disk. Duplicate files occur as a result of user activities as well as specific applications and events. For example, transferring photos from your digital camera to your hard disk could result in copying the same photos twice to multiple directories. If you’re using file backup programs to regularly backup files on your computer, they may create multiple versions of your files regularly. Eventually, your computer runs out of storage and it becomes difficult to distinguish between the duplicate photo and the original file. Here are some problems caused by duplicate photos: Low storage: Your computer may run low on storage and you’ll start encountering low disk space error Poor performance: As duplicate files occupy significant storage, your computer may find inadequate storage for smoother functioning Lead to confusion: You may find yourself working on the same file multiple times. Cluttered Search Results: Your search results become cluttered with unwanted entries. Productivity: Eventually, it affects your productivity and work performance. Solution: Due to advancements in technology, finding duplicates is pretty easy. Downloading a specialized Lightroom duplicate finder PictureEcho could help you free-up 10s of GBs of your storage and get rid of duplicates. Here’s how to fix duplicate Lightroom photos using PictureEcho: Make sure that Lightroom is closed. Download PictureEcho. Click on the Adobe Lightroom header. PE will automatically detect your Lightroom Catalog file. Click on Start Search and wait until the results are processed. PE will display a list of all duplicate photos found and group them based on similarity. Use the Select Duplicates button to mark or unmark files based on different parameters: Mark files by location Mark high-resolution/ low-resolution images Mark bigger/ smaller images Mark most modified/ least modified images Finally, click on Select Action and choose your desired action (Delete permanently or Move to a folder).