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

[Jeffrey Field]

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.

[D Fosse]

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).

[dj_paige]

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]

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.

[Jeffrey Field]

OK, thanks!

[Jao vdL]

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

[Jeffrey Field]

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

[Jao vdL]

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

[TheDigitalDog]

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

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