Lightroom 3 exports

[98kellrs]

I've just started using Adobe Lightroom 3, and so far I'm very, very impressed with it. I have found however that JPEGs I import at 7-10mb seem to be reduced down to 0.7-1mb when I export them. I've checked the size and it's still exporting full size, and at 75% JPEG quality. Is there likely to be a massive IQ reduction with this happening, or is that one of the things that makes LR3 so good?

At the moment it seems to be a bit of a bonus as it massively reduces the time it takes to upload photos to my website, I'm just trying to figure out what effects it is having on the quality of my products.

Cheers,

[kiwi]

Changing quality to 75 will make that sort of difference, same as photoshop

Not really sure though why your uploading full res photos though to your website ?

[TuKhong]

I'm agree that we could use Lightroom 3 for basic retouching pics and reduce its size a little bit.
But not sure we really need to keep full size when uploading to website. It cost time and database to save.
For me, I always crop or scale the image down and keep 100% JPEG quality when upload web.

[ricktas]

Agree with Kiwi, uploading full size (KB) files to your website (unless you sell digital copies directly from it) isn't the best way to go. Make em small and they are less appealing to the borrowers out there. A full size photo can easily be used to print/put into a calendar etc.

Now as to why. Check that you don't have some other setting turned on, on the export settings screen.

[98kellrs]

Hmm thanks for the thoughts, I guess it must just be to do with the JPEG quality setting, seems odd that a ~80% quality export reduces the size by 90 odd percent though, surely it should reduce it by 20%?? Either way I can't see any drastic change in quality so I'm more than happy to have the smaller filesizes.

I sell the originals from my website (smugmug hosted) hence the reason for the upload.

[nicolef]

mmmmmmmmm that shouldn't be happening??? check what you have for the dpi because even if you dont have that section ticked I suspect what you have in that box still stands. Are you using any presets? Some of those bring the size down by a huge amount.

[98kellrs]

My DPI is 240 which could be the reason? I'm not using any presets or anything, I usually just adjust contrast, sharpness and levels.

I must say, after a week with the software I am blown away by it's features. Unbelieveable! It has transformed my workflow and I can't wait to learn the rest of it's more advanced tools.

[kiwi]

It's quite normal for that size file reduction size. 240dpi will not make much difference to the file size but is required for printing.