Exporting an Image and Saving to Disk

As you work with an image, you’ll want to export an image file at some point. This file might be an in-progress save to capture work to date as you edit your photo. Or perhaps it’s to prepare your file for printing or sharing. Luminar Neo offers many options for exporting images to meet your needs.

When you’re ready to export a finished image, click on the Export icon in the top right corner, or Right-click on a photo > choose Export.

1. A dialog box will appear where you can choose where to save your photo and what format you want to save it in. Luminar Neo can save a variety of popular formats, including JPEG, TIFF, and Photoshop.
2. To save a file you can share with family or clients or upload to the web, select JPEG, and adjust the Quality slider to about 85. Click the Export button to create the file.

Tip: High-quality Archives.
To archive a photo, save it as a TIFF file. TIFF files preserve all the details and colors in an image and are great for printing.

Export Image Settings

• Format. You can choose from six file formats. Some formats like TIFF and JPEG offer additional settings for controlling compression and bit depth.
• Sharpen. Choose whether you want to sharpen the exported file and, if so, by how much. Sharpening increases details in the edges of the image and overcomes some of the compression artifacts introduced by formats like JPEG.
• Resize. You can export your image at its original size or enter new dimensions for the image to fit its long side or short side.
• Color Space. You can export your image in one of three color spaces.
  • sRGB is the narrowest color space but is most compatible with the web.
  • Adobe RGB is a common color space used in computer graphics and many software applications.
  • ProPhoto RGB is the widest color space and supports the broadest range of colors. This is the only color space that can contain all the colors captured in a raw photo.
• Quality. Some formats (like JPEG) allow you to assign a Quality setting which will affect overall compression and the file size.

If you are exporting a single file, you can change its name to something more descriptive in the File Name field at the top of the Export Image window. If you’re exporting multiple images, you won’t see this option and the exported files will retain their original file names.

Note: Dots per inch
Dots per inch (or more accurately, pixels per inch) describe an image’s effective resolution. An image that’s 3,000 pixels wide would make a 10-inch print at 300 ppi. You can set the resolution of an exported image using the Resize option in the Export Image window. If you don’t change this setting, Luminar Neo will export your image at the original size.

Luminar Neo can export the following types of files.

• JPEG (.jpg). The Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) format is the most commonly used file format to display continuous-tone images (such as photos) on the internet. Most digital cameras use JPEG because it provides excellent compression; the maximum quality setting provides comparable image quality to much larger file formats like TIFF. Occasionally, the print industry (especially newspapers) will use JPEGs. JPEG offers lossy compression, however, which means that some data is discarded during compression. JPEGs should not be used as an archival or production file format. You should generally only save JPEG files once, as re-saving, a JPEG continues to discard data and lower the image quality.
• PNG (.png). The Portable Network Graphics format provides lossless compression. It is increasingly common on the internet, as most web browsers support it. The PNG format was created to be a patent-free alternative to GIF. Its major advantage is the PNG-24 file, which allows for 24-bit images (8 bits per channel) and embedded transparency. It is technically superior to GIF.
• TIFF (.tif). The Tagged Image File Format is one of the most common and flexible formats available. It’s widely used to exchange files between applications and computer platforms and has a long legacy of compatibility. Additionally, TIFF works with a depth of 8 bits or 16 bits per channel.
• JPEG 2000 (.jp2). The JPEG 2000 format is an update released in the year 2000 by the Joint Photographic Experts Group committee. Its intent was to replace the original JPEG format. It uses a newer and more efficient wavelet-based image compression method.
• PDF (.pdf). The Portable Document Format (PDF) is a file format invented by Adobe that was intended to be an extension of PostScript. A PDF can be viewed on virtually every operating system and portable media player or phone. PDF is an open standard, which means anyone can create applications that can read or write PDFs without paying Adobe. This openness led to the quick adoption of PDF, and it is used extensively online.