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Participant
May 19, 2022
Question

Losing photo quality when I export a raw photo as a jpeg in Lightroom Classic.

  • May 19, 2022
  • 4 replies
  • 344 views

I recently installed Lightroom Classic. I shoot my photos in raw format and import these raw images into LrC. I then edit the raw images. When I export as a jpeg and display that jpeg anywhere, including LrC, it looks grainy. What am I missing. I shouldn't lose quality I set the quality slider to 100%.

 

Thanks a bunch!

 

Tom.

This topic has been closed for replies.

4 replies

TheDigitalDog
Inspiring
May 19, 2022

You may want to examine this in terms of JPEG quality settings:

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

Author “Color Management for Photographers" & "Photoshop CC Color Management/pluralsight"
Community Expert
May 19, 2022

Post a screenshot of your export settings. You might be scaling down the image considerably.

Participant
May 19, 2022

You were right! I did scale it back and tried to display a large version. I appreciate your help on this!

Community Expert
May 19, 2022

Glad you found the issue. It's a big complicated dialog so easy to miss stuff like this.

dj_paige
Legend
May 19, 2022

In addition to what @D Fosse said, you said:

 

I shouldn't lose quality I set the quality slider to 100%.

 

Simply not true, there is always compression and some loss of quality when you export a JPG, and so there is quality loss even when the quality slider is at 100 (also note that the quality slider is not percent, the quality slider is simply a number between 0 and 100)

D Fosse
Community Expert
Community Expert
May 19, 2022

Indeed. "Maximum" is not maximum. Jpeg compression is always destructive.

 

Personally I just don't see the point in cranking the slider all the way up. You still get lossy compression, but not full payoff in terms of file size (if that's important). The sweet spot is somewhere around 60-80.

Participant
May 19, 2022

OK, thanks!

D Fosse
Community Expert
Community Expert
May 19, 2022

You need to view at 100% to compare.

 

100% is a very significant number. It means one image pixel is represented by exactly one physical screen pixel. It's the only way to see the image pixel structure accurately (not resampled/softened).