Lightroom Export Settings for Instagram

Today I'm going to show you the exact Lightroom Export Settings for Instagram!

If you've been finding that your images look fantastic in Lightroom, but then when you upload them to Instagram, they look crunchy or pixelated, or they've just got this really weird color vibe going on, then this is definitely the video for you!

In this video below going to walk you through step by step, setting by setting, exactly what you need to do to export your images for Instagram.

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Prefer to read? here you go!

Step One: Crop to the Correct Aspect Ratio

The very first step in getting our images to look great on Instagram is to make sure that we're using the correct aspect ratio.

And we're going to do this by going into the develop module.

Just go up to the adjustment panel and click on that square there on the left hand side if it, that's going to open up our crop tool. Then just go down to where it says aspect and then click on where it says original.

And you are going to choose one of three different aspect ratios.

So the first is one by one and that's a square. (And as you know, Instagram has always traditionally been a square until they changed it not too long ago!) So if you click on 1 by 1 that's going to give you that square aspect ratio.

The other aspect ratio you can use is one for landscape orientation and Instagram has a very specific number in mind for this, so just click in the same place again and this time I want you to go down to where it says enter custom.

You're just going to type in 1.91 by 1 so that's your aspect ratio there, and click okay.

And you'll see that that now changes to a very specific landscape orientation and size. You can just move that square around, pull it into size and generally get that looking exactly the way that you want to.

The other option that you have is a 4 by 5. So again, just click in that same location and this time select where it says 4 by 5 and you can see that changes to a different type of landscape orientation. You can also just press x on your computer keyboard to change the orientation to a portrait. So if you want a portrait orientation, we use 4 by 5, and just hit x on your keyboard.

Then when you're finished, just hit done there at the bottom or just press enter on your keyboard.

Step 2: Choose File, Location & Name

So once you're finished there, you're ready to move to the library module and click on the export button to open up the expert dialogue box. And this is where you can move onto the second step, which is to choose the file, location and name.

We do this here at the top where it says export too, and you can choose a location. So you're simply telling Lightroom where you want it to save the file to. I normally have that as as my desktop, and I put this into a sub folder and called Instagram photos. Obviously you can call that anything you like, but that will help you find those photos that really easily.

So this way they're going to be on my desktop in that folder called Instagram photos.

Now if you wish, you can also re name those files so you can choose there. I've got different presets already set up, but you can just change that to anything you want. So for example, if it was for a particular client, you could put in their name there..

Step 3: Change the File Settings.

So image format is ALWAYS going to be jpeg and the color space is always going to be SRGB. Now if you choose something like Adobe RGB or pro photo RGB, your images are going to look kind of gray and dull and wonky is not going to look anything like you thought it would, so always make sure that you choose as RGB. So important!!!

Now for quality, we're actually going to move this time from 100 and we're going to move this down to 76. Now apparently that number is perfect for uploading to Instagram to make sure that they don't actually try and compress it (which gives you that crunchy look)

So quality there at 76 and you want to make sure that this limit file size is unchecked.

Step 4: Adjust Image Sizing

Then move down to the next section, which is image sizing. And you're going to check this box here that says Resize To Fit and make sure that we have “long edge” selected and we are actually going to change this to one of two numbers depending on the aspect ratio that you choose.

So if you chose a square for your aspect ratio or that four by five portrait, then you can change this to 1200 on your pixels.

Now if you chose that landscape aspect ratio of that 1.91by 1 then you are going to actually change this to 1080 pixels instead. Now for either of these you're going to have that resolution at 72 pixels per inch.

Step 4: Apply Output Sharpening

And the next step is to apply any output sharpening. Check the box here that says “sharpened far” and make sure that that is “screen” that you have selected. Change this amount to either standard or high. It's going to depend on whether you applied sharpening back in your editing - if you did, you might just want to choose standard, if not choose high. You can play with this and see what you prefer! I generally tend to keep this at standard.

Step 5: Change Metadata, Watermarking and Post Processing

For metadata, I do tend to make this copy right information only. That means the only information that's being uploaded with my image is the copyright contact information. None of the information like what ISO settings I used or what date it was shot, or whether I shot RAW is uploaded - just copyright only.

You're not going to watermark your images, as you don't want to watermark your images for Instagram. so just make sure that you have that box checked.

And then finally is post-processing which we don’t need so we're just gonna have do nothing.

Step 5: Export!

Once you're happy with everything that you have there, you just need to click on the export button and Lightroom we'll get to work exporting in your image beautifully for Instagram, in the folder and location that you specified!

Before you go, be sure to download our Lightroom Classic Starter Kit - it's totally free and it’s loaded with info with everything from importing, exporting, and all the editing steps in between, plus you’ll get some free presets as well! Go here to grab your FREE kit.

That’s it from me today, I hope you found this helpful and I’ll see you next week!