Exporting
Formats, quality, saving back to Photos, and stripping location data.
Exporting renders your edit at full resolution and writes a new image. The original is never touched, and the edit stays live, so you can come back and export again differently.
Formats
| Format | Lossless | Use it when |
|---|---|---|
| JPEG | No | Sharing and general use. Universally supported and small. |
| HEIF | No | Better quality than JPEG at the same size, on Apple devices and modern software. |
| PNG | Yes | Graphics, screenshots and flat colour, where compression artefacts would show. |
| TIFF | Yes | Archiving, printing, or handing the file to another editor for more work. |
Quality
The quality control applies to the lossy formats, JPEG and HEIF, and is ignored for PNG and TIFF, which are lossless containers. The default is high enough that artefacts are hard to spot; drop it only when file size genuinely matters.
Where it goes
Exports save back to your photo library by default, stamped just after the original’s date so the edit sits next to the photo it came from rather than at the end of your timeline. You can export to a file instead when you want to hand it to another app.
Saving to your library uses add-only permission. Matisse can add the new image but cannot modify or delete anything already there.
Stripping location
Photos usually carry the GPS coordinates of where they were taken. Turn on location stripping and the export omits them, which is worth doing for anything going to a public account — a set of holiday photos with coordinates attached says more about your movements than most people intend.
Everything else about export happens on your device; see your photos and your data.