Presets
Three complete settings on one plate, Instagram, Display and Print, none of them lit, each writing a different kind of file. Pressing one fills every field below.
Export presets
Three keys, Instagram, Display and Print, each a complete set of export settings: format, colour space, compression or quality, size and the HDR switch. No key stays lit, since the fields below are the truth.
More about Export presets
On the Export surface, in the Presets part of it.
- Carried by a preset
- Nothing to carry: it is a gesture or a reading, not a setting.
- Press one, then adjust: a preset is the starting point, the fields are the truth.
- Instagram writes sRGB JPEG at 1440px short edge, quality 92, with the HDR gain map on.
- Display writes Adobe RGB JPEG at full size, quality 100, no gain map; Print writes a 16-bit Adobe RGB TIFF at full size.
- Check the count in the export key before confirming: thirty-six 16-bit TIFFs are eleven gigabytes.
Fields
Format, colour space, then the field the format decides (compression for a TIFF, quality for a JPEG), the size, and the HDR gain map.
Format
TIFF at sixteen bits per channel keeps everything the conversion produced, avoiding shadow banding; JPEG is eight bits, lossy, but accepted everywhere.
More about Format
On the Export surface, in the Fields part of it.
- Carried by a preset
- Nothing to carry: it is a gesture or a reading, not a setting.
- TIFF for a print, a lab, or anything you will edit further elsewhere.
- JPEG for a screen, a network, or a contact sheet of the roll for yourself.
- An eight-bit source gains little from a 16-bit TIFF but loses nothing either; the summary flags eight-bit sources.
Colour space
The colour space the file is written in, and the one every export preview renders through, so the column lets you weigh the three against each other on the actual pictures.
More about Colour space
On the Export surface, in the Fields part of it.
- Carried by a preset
- Nothing to carry: it is a gesture or a reading, not a setting.
- sRGB for anything that leaves your hands: the web, a network, a message, a client's screen.
- Adobe RGB for a print, when the lab says so, and for a 16-bit TIFF you will edit further.
- Display P3 for your own wide-gamut screen, and for Apple's ecosystem, which honours it.
- When in doubt, choose sRGB: a wrong wide space is visible, sRGB only costs a little unnoticed colour.
TIFF compression
ZIP compression for TIFF exports is lossless and shrinks the file by about a sixth. It is on by default; LZW was tested on grainy scans and made files larger, so it was left out.
More about TIFF compression
On the Export surface, in the Fields part of it.
- Carried by a preset
- Nothing to carry: it is a gesture or a reading, not a setting.
- Leave it on: there is no quality lost, and the file is about a sixth smaller.
- Switch it off only for a reader that refuses compressed TIFFs; that is rare and it will say so.
- The switch appears only when the format is TIFF; a JPEG shows a quality slider instead.
JPEG quality
The one lossy export choice, from 30 percent, where compression blocks show, to 100, where almost nothing is thrown away. It rests at 85, where film grain compresses well with no visible loss.
More about JPEG quality
On the Export surface, in the Fields part of it.
- Carried by a preset
- Nothing to carry: it is a gesture or a reading, not a setting.
- Leave it at 85 for the web and for yourself; raise toward 92 or 100 for a file to be resaved elsewhere.
- Lower it only under a size constraint, judging the result on a smooth dark area at full zoom.
- Grain is the enemy of a JPEG: a grainy frame is a larger file at a given quality than a clean one.
- The slider only appears for JPEG; a TIFF shows its compression switch in the same place.
Size
Two boxes, width and height, show the first photo's size after crop and turns; the edge you type into is the one the ceiling rides on every photo in the batch. An export never enlarges.
More about Size
On the Export surface, in the Fields part of it.
- Carried by a preset
- Nothing to carry: it is a gesture or a reading, not a setting.
- Full resolution for a print or an archive: leave the boxes as they open.
- A ceiling for the web: type it into the edge that matters, the short one for a network that fits pictures to a column.
- Mixed orientations in one batch: type the short edge, or portraits come out smaller than landscapes.
HDR hack
Writes a JPEG with a flat gain map appended, so an HDR screen shows the picture up to two stops brighter than the page's white; other readers just see the base picture.
More about HDR hack
On the Export surface, in the Fields part of it.
- Carried by a preset
- Nothing to carry: it is a gesture or a reading, not a setting.
- JPEG only, since no TIFF reader honours a gain map; off unless the Instagram preset turns it on.
- Nothing is lost either way: the base file is byte for byte the one the switch off writes.
- Two stops is a measured ceiling: Instagram's Android client caps its boost near there, and past three stops a post reads as a flash.
- Post uncropped, from a desktop browser, at the original ratio; a phone re-encode or a crop drops the map.
- Check it on an actual HDR screen before trusting it; a page cannot show you what it does.
Per-photo fields
Eight EXIF fields typed once beside each preview and written into every file of that photo; nothing of the scanner unless you leave it there.
EXIF fields
Eight fields sit beside each photo: filename, camera, lens, film, ISO, date, artist and copyright. What you type is written into that file only; the scanner's own facts are never copied automatically.
More about EXIF fields
On the Export surface, in the Per-photo fields part of it.
- Carried by a preset
- Nothing to carry: it is a gesture or a reading, not a setting.
- Fill camera, lens and film once per roll, on the first frame, then copy to the rest.
- Leave the scanner's fields blank if you do not know the facts: blank writes nothing, a wrong fact writes a lie.
- Artist and copyright on every file you send out: a network strips them, a lab or client does not.
- The fields open on the scan's own EXIF, so you can see and replace it with the photograph's facts.
- Once typed, a frame's fields are saved in its sidecar and are not carried by presets or paste.