I sent a gallery to a client last spring and got a message back within twenty minutes: “These look kind of washed out? The colors seem off.” I opened the exported files on my phone. She was right. The warm, golden-hour tones I’d spent an hour coaxing out of a flat RAW file had turned into something that looked like it was shot through a dirty window. The edit was fine. The export had killed it.

This happens constantly, and it’s almost never the editor’s fault. Lightroom’s export dialog is deceptively simple on the surface and genuinely complicated underneath. Most tutorials tell you to “export at high quality” and move on. That’s like telling someone to “cook at the right temperature.” Sure, technically true. Completely useless.

The Color Space Problem Nobody Talks About Enough

Here’s what’s actually happening when your exports look wrong. Lightroom edits in a wide color space by default, specifically ProPhoto RGB, which contains colors that most screens can’t even display. When you export, you have to convert that color data into something a screen, printer, or web browser can actually render. If you choose the wrong color space for your destination, the conversion math goes sideways and your colors shift.

For web and client galleries, you want sRGB. Full stop. It’s the universal language of screens, browsers, and social platforms. Instagram, Squarespace, Pic-Time, your client’s Gmail preview, all of them expect sRGB. Export in Adobe RGB or ProPhoto RGB and hand that file to a web platform, and you’re rolling the dice on how the browser converts it, which is usually badly.

For print, the answer changes. If you’re sending files to a professional lab like WHCC or Bay Photo, check their submission specs first. Most professional labs prefer Adobe RGB because it covers a wider gamut of colors that printing inks can actually reproduce. The warm reds and deep cyans in a landscape shot have a better chance of surviving the trip from screen to paper in Adobe RGB than sRGB.

The Settings That Actually Matter, in the Order They Actually Matter

Open your export dialog and work through this sequence. Under File Settings, set Image Format to JPEG and Quality to 90. Not 100. Exporting at 100 creates bloated files with no visible quality improvement over 90, and the difference in file size is not trivial. A 90-quality JPEG from a 24-megapixel file typically lands around 8 to 12 MB. The same file at 100 can hit 25 MB or more. Multiply that across a 500-image wedding gallery and you’re wasting serious storage and upload time.

Under Color Space, pick sRGB for web delivery and check “Limit File Size” only if your platform or client portal has an upload cap. Most don’t, so leave it unchecked.

In the Image Sizing panel, check the “Resize to Fit” box for web. Set it to Long Edge, 2048 pixels, resolution 72 PPI. The 72 PPI number is irrelevant for screens because screens don’t use PPI to determine display size, but keeping it at 72 is clean practice. For print, turn off resizing entirely and let the full resolution export at 300 PPI.

Under Output Sharpening, set it to Screen, Amount: Standard for web. This applies a subtle compensation for the softening that happens during JPEG compression. It’s not dramatic, but skip it and your exports will look slightly softer than your Lightroom preview. For print, switch to Matte or Glossy depending on the paper, still at Standard.

Presets Are the Workflow, Not a Shortcut

After you dial in settings that work for a specific destination, save them as an export preset. Click “Add” at the bottom left of the preset panel in the export dialog, name it something specific like “Web Gallery sRGB 2048” and save it. Next time, one click gets you to your exact settings.

I keep four active export presets: web gallery, social media (1080px long edge, sRGB), full-res print delivery, and a proof preset for client review (1500px, 80 quality, watermarked). The proof preset alone saves me about fifteen minutes per job because I’m not adjusting settings every single time.

If you use Lightroom Classic, you can also set an export preset to automatically run a post-processing action, like dropping files into a specific folder or opening them in another app. Combined with a Folder Watch setup in something like Fundy Designer or Pic-Time, you can build an almost fully automated delivery pipeline.

When I Blew Up a Preset Pack and What It Taught Me

A few years ago I spent most of a weekend building a preset pack around moody, film-inspired tones. I called the presets after songs from a favorite record and genuinely loved how they turned out. I put them up for free download with a matching set of export presets included, since the film look required a specific sharpening and color space pairing to hold up on export.

The pack got downloaded about 50,000 times. The emails I got were almost all about the export presets, not the creative presets. People kept saying, “I’ve never understood why my edits looked different when I exported. This finally explains it.” That response told me more about where people get stuck than any analytics ever had. The creative part of editing gets all the attention. The technical bridge between your edit and the final file is where most of the quiet frustration lives.

The One Setting That Will Save a Client Relationship

Metadata. Under the Metadata panel in the export dialog, choose “Copyright Only” for client deliverables unless your client contract specifies otherwise. This strips location data, camera settings, and other embedded information from the file while keeping your copyright attached. Clients don’t need to know you shot at f/1.4 from the corner of 5th and Broadway. That information is yours. Keep it.

Your edit doesn’t end when you press the adjustment brush. It ends when the file lands correctly in the hands of the person who needs it, looking exactly the way you intended it to look.