Preparing Photos for Web Display: Sharpening, Sizing, and Export Settings

Photography has always been a negotiation between what you saw, what your camera captured, and what the world eventually sees. On film, that final stage was a print. In the digital era, it’s a screen — a medium that demands as much attention to technical preparation as a fine art print ever did. Whether you’re sharing your work on Exposera, your own site, or anywhere else, preparing files properly for web display ensures that what you show online matches your creative intent as closely as possible.

This guide covers the three most critical elements of digital output for the web: sharpening, sizing, and export settings. Each one plays a distinct role in how your image looks once it leaves your editor and reaches the browser.

Why preparation matters

Most cameras today capture enormous amounts of data: 24, 36, even 60 megapixels or more. Those files are designed for maximum flexibility in editing, printing, or archiving. But a web display is different — a typical image on Exposera will be viewed at between one and six megapixels, depending on device and layout. Uploading straight from camera often means trusting the browser to downsample the image on the fly, a process that can introduce softness, aliasing, or odd compression artifacts.

Preparing your files properly before upload ensures that resizing, sharpening, and compression are handled under your control — not by a browser, an app, or an algorithm that doesn’t share your aesthetic priorities. The goal is to create a web-ready file that looks crisp, balanced, and faithful to your vision across different screens.

Step 1: Resize with intent

Resizing is about control. You want to define the pixel dimensions of your output so that it’s large enough for display but not wastefully oversized. As a rule of thumb, an image that’s between 2000 and 4000 pixels on the long edge is more than sufficient for almost any web use. On high-resolution displays, that gives plenty of sharpness without forcing the viewer’s browser to perform costly rescaling operations.

When downsizing, the resampling method matters. Most image editors let you choose between algorithms such as Bicubic, Lanczos, or Bilinear. For photographic images, Bicubic Sharper or Lanczos 3 generally yield the best results. They preserve edge detail while minimizing the “stair-step” or moiré artifacts that can appear when images are reduced too aggressively.

If your editor offers an option to “reduce noise” or “avoid aliasing” during resize, enable it. These anti-aliasing steps prevent subtle jaggedness along fine lines, especially in architectural images or landscapes with thin branches and horizon lines. Always view the result at 100% before exporting — browser previews can be deceptive, and you want to evaluate the actual output pixels.

Step 2: Sharpen for the screen

Sharpening is one of the most misunderstood — and most essential — stages of preparing an image for digital display. It’s not about compensating for poor focus or rescuing an over-soft file. Instead, it’s about counteracting the softening effects of demosaicing, noise reduction, and resampling. Every step in the digital pipeline blurs edges slightly; proper output sharpening restores perceived clarity.

Most workflows use a three-stage sharpening model:

1. Capture sharpening, applied early in RAW development to restore fine detail lost during demosaicing.
2. Creative sharpening, used locally to guide the viewer’s eye — for instance, emphasizing eyes in a portrait or texture in a stone wall.
3. Output sharpening, applied last, tailored to the final medium (print, matte paper, glossy, or screen).

For web output, that last step is critical. If you export without it, your images will often appear slightly soft once displayed at web size. If you overdo it, halos and pixel contrast exaggerations can appear, especially around high-contrast edges.

If you’re using Lightroom, Capture One, or similar software, choose Output Sharpening for Screen (Standard or Low) at export. If your editor lacks a preset, you can mimic it manually:

• Apply a small-radius Unsharp Mask (around 0.3–0.5 px radius, 50–100% amount).
• Avoid large-radius or “crunchy” sharpening styles meant for print.
• Always apply sharpening after resizing, never before — sharpening at full resolution and then downsizing can create strange textures.

Remember that sharpening is about perception. A properly sharpened image will feel crisp without drawing attention to the process itself. Zoom in and out while previewing to see how the sharpening holds up at 1:1 and at screen-fit scale.

Step 3: Choose the right export settings

Once the image is sized and sharpened, the final step is to export using optimal format and compression settings. This stage determines both visual fidelity and file size — a balance between clarity and efficiency.

File format

For photographic images, JPEG remains the most broadly supported and efficient format for web use. Its lossy compression, when tuned correctly, delivers excellent quality at modest file sizes. Use quality 85–92% as a practical range; lower than that risks visible compression artifacts in gradients or shadows, while higher often adds unnecessary file weight without perceptible gain.

If your image includes text overlays, graphic elements, or transparency, PNG or WebP may be preferable. WebP, in particular, provides strong compression at high visual quality and is supported by most modern browsers. However, JPEG is still the safest default for photographic uploads.

Color space and bit depth

Always export in sRGB for web use. It’s the standard color space for browsers and online platforms. Wide-gamut spaces like Adobe RGB or ProPhoto RGB will appear desaturated on systems that don’t honor embedded profiles, leading to dull or inaccurate color.

For bit depth, 8-bit per channel is sufficient — browsers and most web pipelines don’t support higher precision, and 16-bit files only add unnecessary size.

Metadata

Before uploading, decide whether to include metadata such as EXIF or IPTC fields. Retaining EXIF data allows viewers (and you) to see exposure information and camera details, but if you prefer privacy or smaller files, many editors offer an option to “exclude all metadata except copyright.” Either approach is fine; just be intentional about it.

Step 4: Verify and preview

Once exported, always inspect the file as your viewers will see it. Open it in your browser or preferred image viewer at 100% and at common zoom levels. Look for halos, color shifts, or compression patterns in smooth gradients (sky tones are a good test).

If you notice issues, adjust the export parameters:

• Increase quality slightly to reduce compression banding.
• Reduce sharpening strength if edges look brittle or noisy.
• Consider a slightly larger export size for complex, detailed scenes (dense foliage or fine textures benefit from extra pixels).

These incremental refinements are what separate a technically competent web image from one that truly shines.

A note on originals and backups

Your web export should never replace your full-resolution master file. Keep your RAWs or high-bit-depth edits safely stored — ideally backed up both locally and in the cloud — and treat the web export as a final, display-only version. Exposera is designed to preserve and serve your uploads beautifully, but maintaining your own master archive ensures you can always re-export in the future as display technology evolves.

Bringing it together

Sharpening, sizing, and export settings are the quiet craft of digital presentation — the invisible discipline that makes your work appear effortless. These steps may take only a few minutes per image, but they protect countless hours spent shooting, editing, and refining your art.

When you prepare your files thoughtfully, Exposera can do what it’s designed to do: show your photography as you intended — crisp, faithful, and ready for the world to see.