Lightroom: JPEGs Quality vs Size
category: Lightroom • 2 min read
When exporting JPEGs in Lightroom, you can set the quality of the output. It ranges from 0 to 100.
- From 0? What the hell is a 0 quality? It turns out that Lightroom cheats. The 0 quality of a JPEG in Lightroom is not a 0 quality. It looks very similar to a 40 to 50 in Infranview, a free, as in free beer, Windows image viewer. The file sizes are almost the same size.
- I can’t see the difference in photos between a JPEG quality of 100 and a JPEG quality 50 for a small or medium size photos ie: less than 800 pixels wide!
- I can’t see the difference in photos between a JPEG quality of 100 and a JPEG quality 75 for larger photos ie: around 1500 pixels wide!
- Photoshop “Save as JPEG” has 13 steps only: from 0 to 12. These look awfully similar to Lightroom. Look at the file sizes. A JPEG quality of 100 or a JPEG quality of 99 or 98 are the same size, the difference is only 0.05%.
- I can’t see the difference, between a quality of 100 and the quality of 90 even at 1:1 preview but the file size is 29% smaller! Factor contributing: eyes, the video card, the monitor, distance …
File sizes
JPEG Quality | File size |
---|---|
100 | 7432kb |
99 | 7432kb |
98 | 7428kb |
90 | 5276kb |
75 | 2910kb |
50 | 1151kb |
25 | 396kb |
0 | 79kb |
- A JPEG quality of 0 is good for a small thumbnail, around 100 pixels wide.
- A JPEG quality of 50 is good for a medium size photo, 800 pixels wide.
- A JPEG quality of 75 is good for a larger size photo, 1500 pixels wide.