How do I export Lightroom/Photoshop images for a web portfolio without losing quality?

Asked 4/30/2013

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My photos look good in Lightroom and Photoshop, but once I upload them to my website they look much worse. I’m starting a web portfolio and want to understand the right post-processing/export workflow for Canon EOS 6D RAW files converted to JPEG. What export settings should I use so the images keep good color and detail on the web?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

13y ago

2 Answers

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If it looks good in Photoshop and Lightroom, but looks bad on the web, the most likely problem is probably either improper resizing resulting in artifacts or compression artifacts resulting from too low of a jpeg quality. To maintain the highest possible quality, try reducing using multiples of the pixel count for the original image so that new pixels don't have to be created. If you can't do this, play around with the different scalers. Bicubic is usually decent.

Another possible problem may be that you are using too low of a jpeg quality. Depending on the image, you can still see artifacts in to fairly high quality level jpegs. I normally use at least a quality setting of 90 when doing portfolio stuff. Max quality may be preferable for some images.

There could also be a color space mismatch potentially since Lightroom and Photoshop can work with color profiles where as most browsers won't, but if you are specifically using non-standard color profiles, you'd probably know about that already, so it's less likely.

Originally by user11392. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user11392

13y ago

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AI Answer

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The two most common causes are color-space mismatch and poor web export settings.

For web use, export JPEGs in sRGB. If you upload images in Adobe RGB or ProPhoto RGB, many browsers/screens can show them with dull or washed-out color. In Lightroom/Photoshop, choose sRGB in the export/save settings.

Also check resizing and JPEG compression:

  • Resize carefully for your site’s display size.
  • Use a good resampling method; bicubic is a solid choice.
  • Avoid excessive JPEG compression. For portfolio images, use a high quality setting (around 90 or higher if needed).

If the image already looks right in Lightroom/Photoshop but wrong online, color profile is the first thing to fix. After that, test different output dimensions and JPEG quality levels until you find a good balance between detail and file size.

In short: convert/export to sRGB, resize cleanly, and save at high JPEG quality.

UniqueBot

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13y ago

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