Lightroom questions

[Ambrosia7177]

Have been watching tutorial videos on Adboe's website regarding Lightroom. They are very helpful, but I still have some specific questions regarding getting my photos ready for a website I built...

1.) How do I resize a photo to a specific size?
Apparently there is an option to choose the dimensions of the long side, but what if I want to specify the dimensions of the short side? (For example, I want all of my thumbnails to be portrait and 200px wide.)

2.) How can I specify the *exact* resolution of the photo?
Apparently Lightroom has a choice of "small" and "full", but that sounds vague... What if I wanted 96dpi? Or 300dpi? Or something else?

3.) Is there a way to know the exact dimensions of a resized photo before saving?
Maybe I resize a full photo to a thumbnail where the short side is 200px, and I want to know the length of the long side. How do I do that?

4.) Is there a way to know the file-size of a photo before I save it?
As a web developer, "size matters" and I will need to adjust settings to get the exact file-size I think is optimal (e.g. 50KB). How do I do that?

5.) To be clear, is it correct that *anything* I do in Lightroom is NOT destuctive, and that Lightroom will save all of my settings, and when I finally save a corrected photo, then I can save a COPY of the photo, leaving the original untouched?

6.) It seems like Photoshop used to have some other advanced settings that you could apply to photos for the web to get the best benefits (e.g. Bit Depth, How the photo renders, etc.) Does Lightroom have any such features?

7.) When you create thumbnails, what naming/filing convention do you use?
I was going to use an old-school approach and append "_sm" or "_med" to photos that have been reduced for the web. Thoughts?

8.) How do I strip out EXIF data from my photos using Lightroom?

9.) Can I add/customize EXIF data in my photos?

Whew! Sorry for all of the questions, but that should get me started for my already late project...

 

[MacNut]

When you go to export your file you can specify the sizing.

Lightroom is non destructive, you can always revert back to the untouched original.
[automerge]1575322731[/automerge]

 

[dwig]

As MacNut correctly indicated, you can Export from Lightroom, which generates a copy with the desired specs. The other alternative is to use the "Edit in" functions which export to a specified image editor (e.g. Photoshop, ...) for pixel based editing. These "exports" are at the file's native image size and resolution and are done on-the-fly with a temporary file which vanished when the editor receives the data.
You can't actually SAVE files with Lightroom as it lacks the concept of "save". All Lr "edits" are saved as what amounts to an "edit decision list" (EDL), a script of sorts that is a list of what alterations to make when displaying an image and when preparing an image for exporting. The actual source image is not altered other than to insert the EDL data into the file's metadata. Optionally, the EDL can set to save as a separate XML "side car" file.

 

[||\||]

6.) It seems like Photoshop used to have some other advanced settings that you could apply to photos for the web to get the best benefits (e.g. Bit Depth, How the photo renders, etc.) Does Lightroom have any such features?

Photoshop still has Save for Web, but I think it is in a different place than it use to be. It’s in File>Export. I don’t think Lightroom has that same detailed file size/color reduction control. You might need an external editor.

 

[Ambrosia7177]

When you go to export your file you can specify the sizing.

Lightroom is non destructive, you can always revert back to the untouched original.
[automerge]1575322731[/automerge]

So it looks like there are a lot more "bells & whsteles" to saving that what appeared in the video I was watching.

On a side note, I am hating myself right now... I bought the Photographer subscription from Adode, and after two hours of downloading Lightroom it is only 63% done. (I shut down my IDE and other apps because I don't want to risk screwing the install up, and now it looks like my dev laptop is tied up until bedtime. So much for my Monday goal of having this all done?!) ;-(

 

[MacNut]

So it looks like there are a lot more "bells & whsteles" to saving that what appeared in the video I was watching.

On a side note, I am hating myself right now... I bought the Photographer subscription from Adode, and after two hours of downloading Lightroom it is only 63% done. (I shut down my IDE and other apps because I don't want to risk screwing the install up, and now it looks like my dev laptop is tied up until bedtime. So much for my Monday goal of having this all done?!) ;-(

Every edit you make acts like a layer, you can undo every small change you make by rolling back.

 

[Ambrosia7177]

Every edit you make acts like a layer, you can undo every small change you make by rolling back.

Sorry, I don't understand what you are responding to.

 

[r.harris1]

5.) To be clear, is it correct that *anything* I do in Lightroom is NOT destuctive, and that Lightroom will save all of my settings, and when I finally save a corrected photo, then I can save a COPY of the photo, leaving the original untouched?

Nothing happens to the original file in Lightroom or C1 or Photos. What you see on the screen is a combination of the rendered demosaic’d raw file (or original tiff or jpg if not using raw) plus your rendered edits on top. Think less in terms of “saving a copy” and more in terms of exporting or publishing or developing. You export a completed image with your edits applied output in file type you want. The original is never changed.

On the other hand, keep in mind that in contrast to something like Lightroom, Photoshop CAN overwrite your original if you aren’t careful. It’s a different beast.

 

[r.harris1]

I'm continuing to poke on the effort you're expending to build your website . I don't mean this to sound harsh, but reading through all of your questions, a lot of them seem to come up because you're reinventing the wheel and developing your own photo hosting website. Photo hosting has generally become a commodity. It doesn't mean that the existing sites are all perfect, but it's still a consideration as to where you want to spend your time. While I'm sure it can be fun (actually, I'm not so sure ), keep in mind that most of the time, we don't have to think about specifically sizing thumbnails and other tedious aspects of exporting images. At least when it comes to getting images to a place where others can look at them in a professional way. That's why a lot of the default sizing capabilities are things like "small, medium, large" or you focus on the width of the long or short side. Yes, there are time when being specific is required, but when you consider that most images have some sort of aspect ratio and that while you can change those ratios, a lot are standard: 6x4, 8x10, etc.

Generally, I think about cropping or aspect ratio and doing things like adjusting exposure, levels, noise reduction, etc and then export as whatever file format makes the most sense. With many modern hosting sites, "size doesn't matter (as much)", though every site has their own limits of various kinds, to be sure. It's possible that you could have come home from your event and uploaded your event pics to a professionally hosted site in minutes . Then you could have put your feet up, kicked back and relaxed or gone out to take more photographs.

Done poking. Have fun. Bottom line is that you should be able to do all of the very specific sizing that you are looking for in LR - just explore the Export dialog.