uploading and pixels

[Jennifer 52]

I am using Lightroom for the first time mainly for the purpose of adjusting my photos and tagging them.  I want to use the tagging system because I am uploading the photos to Shutterstock and I understand that the metadata will upload with the photo.  I tried to save the photo from Lightroom to my desktop but when I do that the megabytes are reduced.  I cannot see a way to move the photo from Lightroom to Shutterstock directly.  Anyone know what am I doing wrong?  

[JP Hess]

Are you using Lightroom Classic or Lightroom for the cloud? You probably don't want to upload directly from Lightroom unless there is a plug-in to do that specifically. The changes you make using Lightroom do not get applied directly to the images, but are simply stored in the catalog. It is necessary to export a copy in order to have an image that includes the changes made using Lightroom. I don't know anything about Shutterstock, but if your original images are raw images you probably can't post them as original images anyway because most websites don't display raw images. Then again, I could be wrong.

[Jennifer 52]

I just signed up for the free trial of Lightroom (Cloud I believe) to see if it would do what I needed.  Is there a special way to export the photos?  I have been downloading them but then it is reducing the megabytes.