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Atkins Lab
Atkins Lab
Participating Frequently
March 19, 2023
Question

Lightroom will not export jpgs with requested compression levels

  • March 19, 2023
  • 6 replies
  • 1279 views

I have had this error for about 6 months. Have reinstalled and upgraded the software still no change. I set the export jpg compression level to 7 and it exports it as level 12. Have to then resave in photoshop.

 

Am doing this dozens of times a day. Driving me mad.

 

Only way I can get smaller files is the with restrict file size option, god know what's that doing. All I want is web compressed files. This should be easy.

This topic has been closed for replies.

6 replies

J
Community Expert
Jao vdLCommunity Expert
Community Expert
March 20, 2023

Per already gave the answer. In addition, one thing to be very wary of is that by default Lightroom saves all your edits including masks in the metadata section of your jpeg export. This can balloon the filesize. If you're watching your filesize carefully and do a lot of edits in Lightroom to your images, make sure to select "Copyright and contact info only" in the export panel. Another thing to realize is that the scaling algorithm used in Photoshop is very different from what Lightroom does. To get similar sharpness in the final result when you scale down significantly, you should enable output sharpening at medium or high level. Photoshop uses bicubic sharper when scaling down which doesn't generally need output sharpening. Doing both those things and realizing that the compression scale in Photoshop is not the same, you should get pretty close to the same filesize and quality. 

P.S. When you save as in Photoshop on a jpeg, the number you see by default has NOTHING to do with the actual compression factor the orginal was saved as.

DdeGannes
Community Expert
DdeGannesCommunity Expert
Community Expert
March 20, 2023

@Jao vdL , I do not under your comment, "Lightroom saves all your edits including masks in the metadata section of your jpeg export."

Surely when you do an export from LrC to create a .jpeg image you will get a completely new image with all your edits applied.
If you were exporting "original" image, what you state should happen.

 

Regards, Denis: iMac 27” mid-2015, macOS 11.7.10 Big Sur; 2TB SSD, 24 GB Ram, GPU 2 GB; LrC 12.5,; Lr 6.5, PS 24.7,; ACR 15.5,; (also Laptop Win 11, ver 24H2, LrC 15.3; PS 27.0; ) Camera Oly OM-D E-M1.
J
Community Expert
Jao vdLCommunity Expert
Community Expert
March 20, 2023

You would expect that, but Lightroom includes all the xmp metadata needed for editing the original raw file in the exported jpegs. It is quite amazing. You can see exactly what edits people did for exported images you see online. Just open up an exported jpeg in Photoshop and do a file info and look for Raw Data. You will see xmp metadata for every single edit your did including info on masks you made and much more. You can actually copy all of it and turn it into a preset again that will work. So yeah if you are protective of your editing recipes, you should make sure to exclude the camera raw info when exporting jpegs.

TheDigitalDog
TheDigitalDog
Inspiring
March 19, 2023

See: 

http://regex.info/blog/lightroom-goodies/jpeg-quality

Author “Color Management for Photographers" & "Photoshop CC Color Management/pluralsight"
Per Berntsen
Community Expert
Per BerntsenCommunity Expert
Community Expert
March 19, 2023

The quality scales are different in Lightroom Classic and Photoshop.

LrC uses a scale from 0 to 100, PS uses a scale from 1 to 12.

You have set quality to 70 in LrC, which is not the same as 7 in PS.

 

See the correct answer by @Todd Shaner here:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/equivalent-jpeg-compression-settings-w-ps-quot-export-quot/m-p/12634001#M259067

    Atkins Lab
    Atkins LabAuthor
    Participating Frequently
    March 19, 2023

    When I open the files in photoshop, save as opens with a prompt for level 12 jpg, I select level 7 and the file size is drastically smaller after saving down in Photoshop. It's not exporting them out as level 7.

    Conrad_C
    Community Expert
    Conrad_CCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    March 19, 2023

    Another aspect of this is that you can never really just save back to the same JPEG. Because JPEG uses lossy compression, the file is going to degrade slightly even if you save using the same JPEG compression level. So even if Lightroom Classic and Photoshop used the same scale and you set it to the same level and didn’t edit the image, there is no guarantee that the new JPEG file will be the same file size and appearance.

     

    From that point of view, it almost doesn’t matter if the default JPEG compression level in Photoshop is different than the level that was in the file when Photoshop opened it.

     

    I just did a test. I exported JPEG images from Lightroom Classic at different levels of JPEG quality, opened both in Photoshop, and chose JPEG from File > Save a Copy. Even though they were exported with different JPEG quality levels, Photoshop defaulted to 12 for both, even if I changed it and saved. So it looks like Photoshop will always default to 12 for JPEG from File > Save As or Save a Copy.

     

    But those are not the only ways to get a JPEG out of Photoshop. You can also export a JPEG file using File > Export > Export As, and File > Export > Save for Web (Legacy).

     

    File > Export As seems to default to 6 regardless of the starting quality or what you set last time.

     

    But File > Export > Save for Web (Legacy) remembers the last settings, so if you export your JPEG that way and change the quality level, it will remember it for next time. And, you can save a preset of the format settings. However, because this command is intended for web/mobile, it will not retain all metadata such as ppi resolution for print.

      Atkins Lab
      Atkins LabAuthor
      Participating Frequently
      March 19, 2023

      DdeGannes
      Community Expert
      DdeGannesCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      March 20, 2023

      @Atkins Lab , Thanks for the info the things that affect the file size are the Quality setting "70" and the pixels on the long size "1600". You should uncheck the Don't Enlarge option.

      Just my thoughts.

      Regards, Denis: iMac 27” mid-2015, macOS 11.7.10 Big Sur; 2TB SSD, 24 GB Ram, GPU 2 GB; LrC 12.5,; Lr 6.5, PS 24.7,; ACR 15.5,; (also Laptop Win 11, ver 24H2, LrC 15.3; PS 27.0; ) Camera Oly OM-D E-M1.
      DdeGannes
      Community Expert
      DdeGannesCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      March 19, 2023

      Could you post a screen capture of the export dialog settings you are using to create the image you require.

       

      Regards, Denis: iMac 27” mid-2015, macOS 11.7.10 Big Sur; 2TB SSD, 24 GB Ram, GPU 2 GB; LrC 12.5,; Lr 6.5, PS 24.7,; ACR 15.5,; (also Laptop Win 11, ver 24H2, LrC 15.3; PS 27.0; ) Camera Oly OM-D E-M1.
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