The New Improved Export: Faster, Smarter, and Multitasking

Photo work generally includes import, sorting, editing, and export, i.e. saving your final photos. But saving edited photos isn’t by far the only thing the new, improved Export can do: It also has a wide range of uses for preparing previews, renaming saved photos, and saving photos online. And you can even do all of this at once with no problems. So take a moment to get to know this new feature in the Autumn Update of Zoner Photo Studio X.

In ZPS X, exporting a photo means using the original of a photo file to create a new file while keeping that original. This is fundamentally different from traditional saving, where you overwrite the original file. Export is most often used during RAW file adjustments, because it’s not even possible to store edits to RAW files at all. But that’s not Export’s only use. So let’s go over the various options and settings here. 

Taking Advantage of Simultaneous Exports

You’ll find the Export button in Zoner Photo Studio in the Manager and Develop modules. Click it or press Ctrl+Shift+X to export either a single photo or a whole series of them. Just select the photos and click on Export—it’s the green button in the Side Panel on the right.

This displays the Export window, with several practical presets towards the top. To launch several export types together all at once, click Export Multiple Presets Simultaneously and use the checkboxes here. For example, you can save photos at full resolution and smaller previews for sharing on the web, both at once.

You can also show these presets by clicking the small triangle next to the Export button in the right panel. This is very practical and a time-saver if you have certain Export settings that you use a lot. 

When you’re running multiple exports simultaneously, you can sometimes run into conflicts among those exports. For example if you try to export multiple photos with the same name to a single folder, or if source files are missing. In these situations, you’ll be shown a warning right at the start of the export process. So it can’t happen that you start the export and come back a few hours later only to see an error message that popped up at some point halfway through the job. 

Choose Where the Photos Are Saved 

And now for the saving options themselves. First choose where the exports will be saved. This is up to you, but it’s more practical to choose a single system here and stick to it. One convenient approach is to save readied JPGs to subfolders under the same folders as their original RAWs. This keeps things well-organized, if you name these subfolders after the names of the export presets. Then when you’re multi-exporting, you’ll have subfolders such as JPEG – Archive quality, JPEG – Minimized for Web, etc. 

But you don’t have to just export photos to folders on your disk. You can for example click Save to: Specific folder, click the folder button, and choose Zoner Photo Cloud or an album in your Zonerama gallery. 

Setting up Batch Renaming

The next step here is renaming. Once again it’s good to choose one system and stick to it. For example, I give my full-resolution photos names following the pattern “date + filename.” I leave my previews for clients un-renamed, so that I don’t run into the situation where a photo loses a name that would otherwise let me look up its RAW original. 

But the possibilities here are broad, and if you click on Variable Text…, you can even create your own name based on, for example, EXIF data, your own text, and many other things. 

Choosing the Right Format

First select what you want to export. You’ll generally use the first option, Full quality including Develop module edits. That means that your exported photos will reflect any adjustments you’ve made in Develop, and they’ll be a full quality. 

The other options can sometimes be handy as well. For example JPG stored in RAW (embedded). This option draws its image data out of the small previews that all RAW files have inside of themselves. That makes this kind of export very fast even when you want to export previews for thousands of files. It’s a great choice when for example you’re exporting small previews for a client to choose from. 

When it comes to the export format itself, the most practical and widely used is JPG. But other formats can occasionally also come in handy. PNG for pictures with transparency, TIF for the highest-quality printing at large sizes, etc. 

Choose the JPG quality based on how you’ll be using a picture. No visible loss of quality is caused by a value of 95 here. Values of around e.g. 50 can save considerable space when you’re creating small previews for large numbers of photos and you don’t care about their quality. 

Setting the Resolution

The best sizes to choose for your final pictures depend on how they’ll be used. Don’t change the resolution on JPGs you’ll be using for archival. Use 2048 px on the longer side for Facebook photos. For small previews to send to your clients, 1024 px on the longer side is generally enough. 

Sharpening is also related to resolution. For example when you’re exporting to a lower resolution for Facebook, etc., it’s a good idea to sharpen the pictures. For on-screen sharing, choose sharpening For screens; for photos you’ll be printing, choose For printers. 

Mastering Metadata

It makes sense to get rid of metadata when you don’t want other people to have any information on how you took the pictures. Which EXIF data to keep around is all up to you. Some people even remove metadata completely just to save a few kilobytes per photo… 

Click on Export and Leave It to ZPS

Once you OK the export, a warning message or messages will appear immediately if there’s anything wrong with your settings. So once you see that the export has really begun, you can head off to make coffee worry-free. Download Zoner Photo Studio X, try it free for 7 days, and discover how the improved Export window makes your work easier.