Lightroom: print or export for online printing of specific aspect ratios

jchin

Which is better?

Use the Develop module to crop an image to a specific ratio and then export it to a JPEG

or

use the Print Module and print them to a JPG with a specific page size (aspect ratio)?


To me, the Print Module seems easier because I don't have to make temporary virtual copies, however I am wondering if this has any downside.

The goal is to upload the images to an online print service to get prints made.

TIA

arodney

The 'problem' with Print is you don't have control over the compression and you have to end up with a JPEG. If that isn't an issue and you don't want to crop a Virtual Copy (and you do realize that if you crop on a master, you can undo it at any time), Print is OK. There's way more control in Export for color space, compression, how the metadata is handled etc.