Export
Bake your edits into brand-new JPEGs and leave the originals exactly as they were.
Shortcuts are written the macOS way — on Windows and Linux, read Cmd as Ctrl. Press ? inside the app for the list as your own machine shows it.
Select one photo or a hundred in the grid — or just open one and
export it on its own — then click the Export button (or
press X), choose the desired resolution, and click
Export. LightPhotos bakes your adjustments into
brand-new JPEGs and writes them into an Exports folder inside
the folder you opened, created the first time you export.
- The originals are left exactly as they were. Your edits stay in place too, so you can change a slider tomorrow and export again — exporting never consumes or overwrites anything.
- Exports are ordinary files. Open them in anything, attach them to an email, hand them to a print shop. Nothing about them needs LightPhotos to still exist.
- Nothing is uploaded. The decode, the adjustments and the JPEG encode all happen on your own machine, and only the files you selected are written — the rest of the folder is untouched.
- Deleting is different. The Delete key removes the photo itself from disk and cannot be undone. Exporting is the safe way to make something new.
That is the whole loop. If you have not read the earlier steps, start at opening the app; the keyboard shortcuts are what make the second shoot twice as fast as the first.