Best Instagram Export Settings for Lightroom and Photoshop
Learn the Best Instagram Export Settings for Lightroom and Photoshop. Upload high-quality photos using the best Instagram export settings for Lightroom and Photoshop.
Best Instagram Export Settings
So have you ever wondered why your photos don’t look as good after you upload them to Instagram? In this video, I’m gonna help you with your export settings, so you can upload high quality photos for Instagram from Photoshop or Lightroom. Let’s get started. Don’t forget to check out the links in the description. Hello, I’m Charles. Welcome to the channel. If you’re into Photoshop, Lightroom, and photography, and even a little video and video editing. Please consider subscribing and click the bell notification, so that you’re notified when we release brand new content every single week.
So, what do I mean by uploading high quality photos to Instagram? Aren’t all photos high quality on Instagram? Well, they could be, and not always are they. But one way that you can get to that is you can follow Instagram’s own guidelines as far as image size and aspect ratio.
Here’s a page from Instagram’s help center. So, it’s telling you that there is a width range from 320 to 1080 pixels and that you can have an aspect ratio of 1.19:1 or 4:5 ratio. And the height needs to be between 566 to 1350 pixels, with a width of 1080 pixels. So, those are the measurements, but really the statement here. “If the aspect ratio of your photo isn’t supported, it will be cropped to fit a supported ratio.” And the other statement, “If you share a photo at a lower resolution, we enlarge it to a width of 320 pixels. If you share a photo at higher resolution, we will size it down to a width of 1080 pixels.” So, basically what they’re saying is if you don’t go in these guidelines, they’re going to squash your picture, this way and that way in order for it to fit on Instagram. So, that may take a lot of the quality out of your photo.
So now we’re gonna go over into Photoshop and solve this problem. So first let’s talk a little bit about this aspect ratio and what it means to our photography, and kinda get an idea of why one aspect ratio is better than the other for Instagram. So I’m sure you know that if you use your camera and you hold it this way. That is horizontal, and that’s the picture that you see on the screen right now. So horizontal orientation. Same if you wanna use your cell phone, hold it up like that. But how this comes into play, come up here to crop, come up here to ratio and type in 1.19 and put one over here. And I’m gonna take this grid out. Here you can see that this is going to be cropped to this aspect ratio. And you have some areas here where your top and bottom is cut off and you can reposition your photo and maintain that aspect ratio. So if I commit this change, there is my 1.19:1 aspect ratio.
When you put this in Instagram, what’s gonna happen is, it’s going to work in Instagram. You still have to size it to 1080 pixels wide for the width of this picture, but it’s gonna look further away when you post it. So, what you really wanna do to maximize Instagram’s real estate, is you want to shoot vertically. Like this or if you have a picture like this, where it’s a horizontal orientation. You can come up here to, let me clear this, 4:5 aspect ratio. And you can see that it’s now, changed that aspect ratio. So if cropping this with 4:5 aspect ratio still tells your story, you could do this.
The best way is probably to shoot for Instagram in the vertical orientation. Okay so, remember, we’re gonna shoot our images for Instagram in the vertical mode. So the first thing we wanna check and we can check this in a couple of different places. But let’s check it here, under image, mode, make sure it’s in RBG color. And so if you made the adjustments for brightness and contrasts in Lightroom and brought it into Photoshop, that’s a good place to start. You can also adjust your color, in Adobe Camera Raw. I am going to come down here to add a new adjustment layer and add a color lookup. And I’m going to choose crisp winter look. And close that, and I’m going to take down the opacity just a little bit. So it’s just an example, things you can do.
And now what wanna do, is we want to crop our image. I’m going to come up here to the crop tool. C for the crop tool. And up here at the top I’m going to select ratio and type in four in the first space and five in the second space. So here is my 4:5 aspect ratio. And i can move this up or down to get my crop how I want it. Click on this check mark. And so now I’m gonna size the image. So I come up here to image, image size, and first I’m gonna make this resolution to 72. And then I’m gonna change my width to 1080. And this is what Instagram wants. Width of 1080 and heigth of 1350. I say okay, it got smaller. So here is my image.
Now what I wanna do and the last thing you should do is, sharpen. After you’ve got it cropped and sized, then do the sharpening. So I’m going to make a new layer, then hit Shift + Option + Command E, to make a stamp visible layer. And now I can do my sharpening. I’m gonna come up here to image, adjustments, to desaturate. And I’m gonna make a smart object out of this layer. Right-click on that layer and say, convert to smart object. I’m gonna change the blend mode of this to overlay. Because I want to kinda see my sharpening at real-time. And then I’m going to come up to filter, other, high pass. And if I zoom a little bit or a lot. Right now I got the radius. That’s way over-sharpening. And right now the radius is at 1.1, I’ll say okay. And I can turn that layer on and off and you can see the sharpening.
So now we’re ready to export this. Come up here to file, export, export as. Here’s the export as dialogue box. Of course, we want a JPEG. Image quality I’m gonna drop this a little bit to 72. And image size, it’s already 1080 by 1350. Canvas size is the same. And so I can export it anywhere on my drive here. And so now you wanna get it on your phone. If you have an iPhone you can AirDrop it, which is something I like to do. If you have iCloud, then you can put it in your photos from your MAC computer. Dropbox, Google Drive, anything to get it on your phone. So now that I have AirDropped my photo to my phone. All i need to go, is over to Instagram. Now I’m on my Instagram page, I just hit the plus. And here is the image. Don’t forget to hit the arrows, here on the lower left-hand corner, so that it looks like that. So I can keep on hitting next and then upload it.
So let me show you how to upload through a browser on your computer. So I’m on a Mac and I’m using Google Chrome, you know. And come up here to the menu, on the top right. And come up here to more tools, developer tools, and this icon up here, it looks like a phone. I’m gonna click on that. And it actually looks like I’m on a phone. If you don’t see this plus down here, refresh your browser. So now if we click on this plus just like on the phone, and I’ll choose my file. Say open and there it is, in Instagram. Click on the double arrows right there and you can keep on saying next. And eventually, you can post it.
So now, let’s go over to Lightroom and work on our settings there. Here is that same image in Lightroom and I’ve already added some adjustments here in the basic panel. Now I’m coming over to the calibration panel. And I’m gonna give this image a little teal and orange look. Something like that. So now, I’m gonna crop this and remember what we said, the 4:5 aspect ratio is what we want for Instagram. We can also do 1:1, but we’ll do 4:5. And there it is. And I’m gonna pull this down just a little bit and hit enter.
So now, we have our aspect ratio taken care of. Now I think I wanna sharpen it a little bit. So I’m gonna come over here to detail and just bring up this sharpening here. If I hit Alt or Options and click on the masking the white areas are visible. So if I bring the masking to the left, the black area is hidden so it’s not sharpening the sky. And we’ll just take out some of the sharpening and just keep it around the building as much as we can and the plants. And if I zoom in a little bit. There’s the before and there’s the after.
Now I go over to the library module and hit export. I’m gonna leave export location to where it is. It’s going to show me the location when I export it. I’m not gonna rename the file. Image format is JPEG. Colors space is RGB. Quality, 70- ish is good. Now we’re going to hit this resize to fit, but I want the short edge to be 1080. Resolution is 72. I’m not gonna sharpen cause I already did. And I’m going to say, export. And I can export to the file system. And now I can either AirDrop it the same way I did to my phone or I can upload through a browser.
So now, the question of the day. What software do you use to set your export settings for Instagram? Let me know in the comments below. If this video was helpful, give it a like and don’t forget to subscribe. If you want more short tutorials, see the ones above. And remember, it’s never too late to learn. Thanks for watching. See you in the next video.
See my photography website here 👉 https://www.charlescabreraphotography.com
See the article on Adobe Camera Raw 👉 https://charlescabrera.com/what-is-adobe-camera-raw-used-for/