# Photo loosing sharpness when exported



## monica (Apr 3, 2015)

I am having a very big trouble with this. I edit my photos,I export them and then I see they are blurry. I searched about this problem, saw even an archived thread about this - still not solved. I tried to save the image at different sizes, to make them the highest quality, but still my saved image were blurry. It's like they loose the sharpness from develop mode and gain some noise reduction. This happened with LR3 but it seems that the problem still persists. Please, tell me how to fix it.


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## Nogo (Apr 3, 2015)

I am not familiar with Picasa so I probably can't help you with your photos, but I know the people who can help you will need more information.

It appears you are saving the file to Picasa.  What are your quality settings for Picasa and how are you uploading it to the host?  

Having never used Picasa since I got Lightroom I don't have any experience with publishing to it but Jeffrey Friedl has a plug in for that host as well as the ones of his I do use.  My (untried) advise would be if you are having problems with any other way of saving photographs to a host, I would try one of his plugins.  Here is the link to the one for Picasa: http://regex.info/blog/lightroom-goodies/picasaweb


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## Jim Wilde (Apr 3, 2015)

Monica, welcome to the forum.

You say you've "exported at different sizes to make them the highest quality". There are other settings which will likely affect the sharpness quality more, specifically the Quality slider and the Output Sharpening value. Can you tell us what those settings are in your export dialog, or better still post a screenshot of the dialog box.

@Nogo, all that screenshot shows is that Monica has used the Picasa Photo Viewer (desktop app) to preview the images (instead of the default Windows Photo Viewer), that screenshot isn't taken from within Picasa. As such it shouldn't be a factor in this specific issue, although Monica should note that the Picasa Viewer isn't colour-managed by default, unlike WPV, but it can be enabled in the Preferences.


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## monica (Apr 3, 2015)

Thank you so much for the answers. I know I'm a noob in this thing but I hope I will understand what to do. @Nogo, thank you, but like Jim said, I used Picasa only for viewing the image. This time I made a screenshot using Windows Photo Viewer and one with the export dialog.
I wonder if the problem comes from the fact that I am actually shrinking my image when I save it. I searched and found out that this reduces the quality of the image. The original photo is 3072x2084 and 1,8 MB with 180 dpi. The final one is 1000x746 and 436 KB with 762 dpi.


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## Jim Wilde (Apr 3, 2015)

Try enabling the Output Sharpening option in the Export dialog, set to Standard or High (you could try both). If that doesn't do anything, try unchecking the Resize box, i.e. export at full size. Then see what the results are. If the exported file is sharp, you could try differently (lower) sized exports until you find the point at which it looses sharpness.


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## monica (Apr 3, 2015)

Quest solved! Thank you, Jim. The problem was the shrinking of the image in the export dialog. I was seeing the image sharp in develop and unsharp when saved ( and shrinked). I understand now, but somehow it's frustrating that I can't see sooner how the final image would look.
Thank you so much for your time!


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## Modesto Vega (Apr 3, 2015)

As Jim suggests, I will definetely try to sharpen for Screen using High as a setting. In your screenshot, you have the width set to 1000 and the height to 0; is this an accident or intentional? If what you are trying to do if getting LR to automatically calculate the height, this is not the way I go about it; I always enter both width and height, as long as Resize to Fit is selected LR will keep the original aspect ratio and will not try to strech any edges.

Edit: you also need to find the longest edge which is not always the width.


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## monica (Apr 3, 2015)

I did not set the height intentionally, the width was the longest edge and I wanted to keep the aspect ratio so I though it will calculate the height. I tried that now, with W and H both set and the saved image is ok-ish. Now it's pretty sharp but pixelated. I think that is normal after what I learned now about shrinking images-that the quality drops.
I think this is the moment I should begin taking RAW pictures.


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