Get your work out, exactly the way you want it
Deliver exactly what's expected, every time
Export exactly what a client or platform needs
Set per-variant quality for photo, video, and audio once, then batch-export filtered selections to the destination you choose — the days of manually re-exporting the same shoot three different ways are over.
Export without slowing down
Runs in the background, on your machine, at your pace
Exports render as background jobs with live progress, so a large batch never locks up the app while it works — and because it all happens locally, nothing leaves your machine until you decide it should.
Export
Export gets your finished work out of Fictura and onto disk (or a remote destination), exactly the way you want it. There are two ways to export — this page covers the batch/filtered exporter; for exporting just one item, see Exporting a Single Media Item.
Choosing what to export
From the Export view:
- Pick which media types to include — Photos, Videos, Audio, or any combination.
- Filter by date range, tags, or Portfolio only (see Portfolio) to export exactly the subset you mean, without hand-selecting files one at a time.
Per-type settings
Each media type has its own format and quality controls:
- Photos — format (JPEG/PNG/etc.), quality, progressive encoding, lossless mode, and compression level.
- Video — codec, bitrate, encoding preset, resolution, and audio codec/bitrate.
- Audio — format and quality settings appropriate to the audio pipeline.
Destination
Six destination types, configured in the Export view's destination picker:
- Local — any folder on disk.
- NAS — a network-mounted folder, written to exactly like a local folder; "NAS" is just a label for your own organization, not a separate protocol. See Connecting a NAS.
- Dropbox — your local Dropbox sync folder. Fictura writes files there like any other local folder and lets Dropbox's own desktop app handle uploading them — there's no separate account connection or API integration. See Connecting Dropbox.
- Google Drive — the same idea for Google Drive's local sync folder. See Connecting Google Drive.
- S3 — uploads to an S3 bucket (
s3://bucket/prefix), including S3-compatible providers like Backblaze B2 or MinIO via a custom endpoint. Credentials come from environment variables (AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID/AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY/AWS_REGION/AWS_ENDPOINT_URL) or theexport.s3config block — S3 isn't configurable from the Settings UI itself. See Connecting an S3 Bucket. - Remote (SSH) — pushes over SSH using
rsync, to a host/user/SSH key path/remote directory configured either right in the Export view or under Settings's Export → SSH fields. See Connecting a Remote Server (SSH). An optional "skip files already on server" toggle passesrsync --updateso re-running an export to the same remote directory only transfers what's changed.
Local, NAS, Dropbox, and Google Drive are all the same underlying local-folder write — the distinction is purely which label makes sense for where you're pointing it. S3 and Remote (SSH) are the two destinations that actually transfer over a network, and both stage the full export in a temporary local folder first, then transfer it as one batch.
Why so many destinations
The same philosophy that shapes Import applies here in reverse. Many other photo/video editors typically fold export into a single vendor's cloud or a single folder convention they control. Fictura doesn't pick a destination for you — a plain folder, a NAS, whichever cloud sync folders you already use, an S3 bucket, or your own server are all first-class options, so export goes wherever your workflow already sends things, instead of adding a migration step to get it there.
Options
- Add mode (skip existing) — don't re-export files that already exist at the destination, useful for incremental exports to a folder you're syncing elsewhere.
- Only new files — limit the export to files added since your last export.
- Include manifest.json — write a manifest describing everything that was exported (paths, formats, and settings used), useful for downstream automation or record-keeping.
- Include SQLite database — bundle a copy of your library database alongside the exported media, for a fully self-contained export.
How rendering works
If a needed variant doesn't exist yet at export time, Fictura generates it on the fly from the item's current active version — using the fast path for an untouched v001 baseline, or the full edit pipeline for a saved v002+ version, so exports always reflect your actual edits without any separate "render" step beforehand.