Export

Export writes finished photos to a folder, or uploads them into an Immich album, with your choice of size, format, file names, borders and captions.

If you’ve used another editor: it is the usual export dialog with presets on the left, plus a watermark and borders built in. Publishing to a photo service is done by Immich album.

Open it with Export on the rail, or ⇧⌘E.

The dialog has three columns: presets on the left, settings in the middle, and a preview of the first photo on the right, which updates as you change things. Each section folds to a one-line summary.

Presets

• Built-in:
  • Full Size JPEG: quality 90, the original size
  • Web 2048: quality 85, 2048 px on the long edge, location removed
  • Frame with EXIF: 2048 px with a white border, wider at the bottom, and captions for the title, the date and the camera settings
  • Fixed Ratio 4:5: every photo, landscape or portrait, on a white 1638 x 2048 canvas, as Instagram shows them, with a thin white edge around the photo; location removed
• My Presets: your own.
  • + saves the settings as they are now as a new preset.
  • Save keeps changes to the chosen preset; ” (edited)” shows when it has some.
  • Double-click a preset to rename it; click its icon to choose another.
  • Share saves a preset as a file; Import reads one. Shared presets leave out your folder and album.

Destination

Save to: Folder or Immich album.

For a folder:

• Choose a folder…
• Inside a new folder: puts the files in a subfolder, Export by default.
• If a file exists: Ask me, Add a number, Replace it or Skip it. Ask me offers Use Unique Name, Overwrite, Skip or Cancel, and can apply your answer to every clash.
• Show in Finder when done.

For Immich, choose an album, or New album…. A photo Immich already has goes into the album without a second copy. See Immich.

File Name

• Same as original
• Custom name + number: for example Paris-001, Paris-002
• Built from photo info: a pattern such as {caption}-{datecaptured}. Insert photo info… adds a field; Date style sets how dates look.

A date can take its own format: {datecaptured:YYYY.MM}. Characters a file name can’t hold become _. The example line shows what the first file will be called.

Format & Size

• Format: JPEG, TIFF, PNG or WebP.
• Quality: 10-100 (JPEG and WebP).
• Bit depth: 8 or 16 bit (TIFF and PNG).
• Size: Original size, Fit long edge to… a number of pixels, Fixed canvas…, or AI upscale 2× / 4×.
• Color space: sRGB, Adobe RGB (1998), Display P3 or ProPhoto RGB.

Fixed canvas makes every file exactly the width and height you give, filled with the canvas color. Each photo, with any frame from Frame & Captions, is fitted inside and centered. Turn for landscape photos swaps the width and height for landscape photos. A photo smaller than the canvas is not enlarged; it sits in the middle at its own size.

AI upscale is offered only on a computer with a supported GPU. It makes a 20 MP photo 80 MP (2×) or 320 MP (4×) and takes a few minutes for each photo. Its model (55 MB) downloads the first time.

Frame & Captions

Three kinds of item, each added with its own + button. They fold to a summary and can be moved up or down.

• Frame: space added around the photo; nothing is cropped. The same width all round, or each side on its own (a wider bottom, for a gallery look). Widths are in pixels or a percentage of the short or long side.
• Keyline: a thin line on the photo’s edge, or inset from it.
• Captions: text from each photo’s info, in the border or on the photo, at one of nine positions. Choose the font, size and color; More adds an offset, opacity and a backdrop box.

Captions use the same fields as file names, and more: shooting info (mm · f · s · ISO), camera make, focal length, aperture, shutter speed, exposure compensation and subject distance. If a photo lacks a piece of info, text after a comma stands in: {lens, unknown lens}.

Keywords

Keywords typed here are added to every exported file, along with the photo’s own keywords, so a preset such as one for your website can mark what it exports with website. Type them as in the Keywording card, separated by commas, Places > Paris for a hierarchy; click × to take one off. Presets keep them.

The originals are left alone unless you tick Also add to the original photos: each photo exported then gets the keywords too, in Immage and in its XMP sidecar.

Metadata

What each exported file says about the photo. Each box adds its part to the file; presets keep the boxes as they are.

• Camera and lens: the make, model, lens and exposure settings, and the camera’s own notes.
• Serial numbers and owner name: the camera’s, lens’s and accessories’ serial numbers, and an owner name set in the camera. Off by default, as they identify your gear (Flickr, for one, shows them to everyone).
• Location (GPS): where the photo was taken.
• Title, caption, creator, copyright: the photo’s text fields, including any another program wrote into the original.
• Keywords: the photo’s keywords and those added above.
• darktable edit history: the edit itself, as darktable stores it. Off by default.

The date taken is always included.

Which photos

At the bottom: Current image, Selected (N) when several are selected, or All shown (N), every photo the filters leave showing. With several selected, the dialog opens on Selected.

Click Export. The dialog closes and the export goes on while you edit: the bottom left of the photo shows how far it has got, and Stop ends it after the photo it is on. Each photo is exported as it was when you clicked Export, even if you edit it meanwhile. When the export is done, the same place says what happened. That goes away by itself if nothing went wrong; otherwise OK dismisses it.

This page is part of immage's own docs, at v0.41.1. View the source on GitHub.