What Export Presets Do Photographers Use Today for Everyday Sharing (after Editing RAW Files) ?

kaleidoscope on 28/04/2025 - 15:21

G'day folks,
This question is mainly for photographers who primarily shoot in RAW formats (whether it's from a DSLR, mirrorless camera, or even a smartphone).

Once you're done editing your RAW files, what export settings (format, resolution, quality, compression, etc.) do you currently use for everyday purposes — like viewing on phones, tablets, TVs, or uploading to social media?

I'm looking for modern, practical presets that balance good visual quality with reasonable file sizes, so they don't take up too much space on devices or cloud storage.

For context:

I'm not interested in export settings for printing — just everyday digital use.
I'm mainly exporting to formats like HEIC (over JPEG as heic supports modern day improvements).
Yes am aware that HEIC may have compatibility issues with certain windows / linux versions for viewing, but that is not a problem

Curious to hear what workflows or best practices you folks are using these days!

TIA!

Computing

Comments

  • geekcohen on 28/04/2025 - 16:05

    I have usually done MAX Quality and then JPG within Photoshop. I have never had a problem with providing those to people or anything. Most of the exports are often about 15MB or thereabouts from memory.

    • kaleidoscope on 28/04/2025 - 18:37

      I see. Thanks for that details.

  • [Deactivated] on 28/04/2025 - 16:15

    Well, this is not answering your q, but I just shoot with dsrl and never edit though Sony has its own editing software, but I hate social media, uploading, viewing on phone, and sharing.

    • kaleidoscope on 28/04/2025 - 17:06

      That's an interesting usecase. What do you do with the taken photos if you're not editing

      • [Deactivated] on 28/04/2025 - 17:16

        I am an amateur with not much pro photographing knowledge. I shoot if something really is interesting when drive out so not shooting here and there everything. I store them for myself in one of my laptops. I might be wrong, editing software compresses and degrades the images but again I am not a pro.

  • AustriaBargain on 28/04/2025 - 17:19

    For Facebook content I've done some testing and have found exporting at a resolution with the longest edge at 2048 px (even if the image isn't that big) and at 100% quality gives the best image. Facebook will compress the image and the difference between 100% and 70% is noticeable, give Facebook the absolute highest quality you have to give your image the best shot at coming up looking great on people's phones. Don't do the kind of compression you'd ordinarily do for web images. I embed sRGB profile in the image and sharpen a little too so it pops on phones. Facebook has a white background so brighter images will pop more too. And vertical crop if necessary.

    • MS Paint on 28/04/2025 - 17:30
      +1

      Facebook has a white background

      Mine doesn't

    • kaleidoscope on 28/04/2025 - 18:29

      Thanks for the info.

  • bazingaa on 28/04/2025 - 20:11
    +1

    I am not a professional, but there are no issues using any image codecs in Windows 10. I can directly use CR2 and HEIC; you need to install codecs from the Windows Store.

  • 2025 on 29/04/2025 - 00:09

    HEIC isn’t always free from the MS store, only some manufacturers/OEMs include the licence. But if it’s not a problem, then so be it.

    Personally, I still use JPG, 80% quality, usually native res.

    If I don’t want them stealing it and printing themselves, I’ll export at long edge = 2048 pixels

    Years ago Facebook was nasty with their scaling, (EDIT: turns out they still are as commented above aha) and I had specific presets for banners, photo albums etc for the exact dimensions and stuff. These days I just dump them on my OneDrive and share them out with a link.

    If I’m showing someone how the huge chunk of glass is far superior to their iPhone, ie they’ll pixel peep, I’ll bump the jpg to 98%

    • kaleidoscope on 29/04/2025 - 09:22

      Thanks, win 11 has better support for heic afaik.

      If I don’t want them stealing it and printing themselves, I’ll export at long edge = 2048 pixels

      Hmm interesting. What would that dimention of 2048 do against printing though, just curious.

      If I’m showing someone how the huge chunk of glass is far superior to their iPhone, ie they’ll pixel peep, I’ll bump the jpg to 98%

      Well, not very concerned about that tbh. More about everyday use, space efficiency and convenience. I sometimes do slideshow on my tv which i'd say is the largest size i should think about.

      • 2025 on 30/04/2025 - 17:47
        +1

        What would that dimention of 2048 do against printing though, just curious.

        If they try and whack it on a canvas or anything big it will look like garbage. But then again, a lot of people aren’t fussy, they’re happy with their 4x6 bigw prints, so it doesn’t really prevent them from doing it.

        Also, forgot to mention, I prefer to sharpen in the export settings rather than the image itself. Smaller picture, more sharpening.

  • CascadeHush on 29/04/2025 - 08:51

    If I’m uploading to an online service that is going to recompress it as a JPEG with their own settings, I upload it as a PNG. You really don’t want to have stuff being converted from JPEG to JPEG if you can avoid that.

    • kaleidoscope on 29/04/2025 - 09:16

      What sort of a resolution do you keep for these? original images can have insanely large sizes with modern cameras and given pngs are lossless can take up fair bit of space

      • CascadeHush on 01/05/2025 - 00:52

        These days it's mostly Deviant Art (I make mods) and they will create their own preview image, and you can then look at the full resolution by clicking on that. So it really depents if I care much about having a high resolution image that people might want to view in full vs just having the preview.

        If I was going to upload to facebook, knowing they will resize and recompress it anyway, I would just upload whatever the original resolution was and let them deal with it.

        I don't have a modern camera. My DSLR which I haven't used for years is 12MP I think, which is plenty big enough. And my phone is an iPhone 6s plus, which is plenty good enough, sometimes I resize images down if it's just a copy of a reciept or suchlike. Having to deal with absudly and unnecessarily large files is a major reason I don't upgrade my gear. Whats the point of having 4 times more storage on your phone if your images are 4 times larger and don't need to be?

    • dust on 29/04/2025 - 11:21

      Interesting. Have you compared to see if there's a noticeable difference uploading in PNG vs JPEG?

      • CascadeHush on 01/05/2025 - 00:47

        PNG is lossless. JPEG is lossy. If you are converting your original to a lossy format, which you know will then be converted again into a lossy format, it's just bad practice. Each step in that process is introducing artifacts.

        It's something I learned about 20 years ago, I'm not going to pixel peep now.

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