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Why is file size greatly reduced when exported?

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rebeccakharding

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Aug 9, 2021
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Lightroom Version Number
Lightroom version: 4.3 x64 [ 20210526-1005-d4527c2 ] (May 26 2021)
Operating System
  1. Windows 10
I recently started using the cloud based version of LRCC on my desktop computer with Windows 10. When I export photos after editing, the size of the file is crazy small. Even if I'm not cropping the image.

For instance, a raw image that is 27 mb is 429 kb after export in jpeg format, with only some basic edits and no cropping. I've even tried exporting the raw image with no changes to jpeg format and it is under 1 mb.

The export settings I'm using are:

File Type: JPG.
Dimensions: Full Size.
Quality: 90%.
Including all metadata.
Output Sharpening: Screen.
Amount: Standard.
Color Space: sRGB.

I've tried playing around with the export settings, even reducing the quality to 60%, but with no success. After editing, I upload my images to a website that requires the images to be a minimum of 3 mb, so this is a problem for me.

Thank you in advance for any insights and help you can offer me!
 
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MB doesn’t say much with jpeg. Have you checked the size in pixels? Maybe your originals are offline, so you export from smart previews…
 
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RAW images are not compressed or are losslessly compressed. They record Red green or Blue filtered data at each photo site these get combined into one RGB pixel with a value that reflects all three colors for the pixel. Then when you export to JPEG, even at a quality level of 100 (it is not a percentage BTW) The resulting Pixel values are lossy compressed and data before compression is lost when the JPEG is uncompressed and viewed again. JPEGs will always be smaller than their source RAW file.


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"
The export settings I'm using are:

File Type: JPG.
Dimensions: Full Size.
Quality: 90%.
Including all metadata.
Output Sharpening: Screen.
Amount: Standard.
Color Space: sRGB.
"
the files you export are JPG as per your instructions.
what happens when you export a Raw file as RAW?
 
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Exporting raw as raw means you will export the unmodified original with the edits in a separate XMP ‘sidecar’ file. Only Adobe apps can read this, so this is usually not an option. It is completely normal that exporting as jpeg produces a much smaller file. Jpeg as very efficient compression technology built in. Yes, jpeg is a ‘lossy’ compression, meaning that some data are discarded. But this is done in such a clever way that you will not notice, so for an end product jpeg is fine.
 
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Exporting as Original is Adobe's way of saying "make a copy". If you are concerned about Lossy compression, you can always export as a 16 bit uncompressed TIFF. Then you derivative file will be enormous and much larger that the original compressed RAW file.
 
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