Comments on: Q&A – Is Lightroom Destructive to JPEGs?

By: AP

AP — Thu, 21 May 2009 20:41:11 +0000

HI!
I’ve recently discovered your site and it’s WONDERFULL! I’m such a newbie with LR and photography in general, I’d really appreciate your help in this.

I cannot shoot in RAW with my camera at this point. It’s a new Canon SX10, CHDK’s not available for my firmware version and Canon won’t release a firmware update. So for the moment, I’ll just have to shoot in JPG.

So, my question is…how can we work a jpg file in LR? What’s the best we can do?
I’d really appreciate your help, and I think others stranded in jpg would too.
Thank you very much in advance!

By: stefano giovannini

stefano giovannini — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 15:11:04 +0000

RAW+JPG. how to purge the JPGs?
I shoot mostly RAW. On some occasions I shoot also RAW+JPG. In some instances the JPG looks better and I can use it as a reference for the RAW processing.
I like to import the files not separately so I can rename/rate delete the JPG and the RAW at the same time.
The issue is if I want to delete the JPGs to save space and I do it manually then I get a “?” symbol that indicates the sidecar JPG is missing. I can’t see a menu option about purging the JPGs not needed and keeping the RAW file… Is there a way that does not mean to delete the files from the catalog and reimport then [I would lose the history etc]?

stefano

By: Jeff

Jeff — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 04:14:41 +0000

I export my photos from LR 1.3 as jpgs and they always look different from the way they look in lightroom. The images turn flat and look under exposed or muddy looking. This sucks since the enhancements in LR make them look great. It’s like LR isn’t applying the changes before it exports them. How can I get the exported images to look the way they do in LR? Any help in this matter would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

By: Ron McDermott

Ron McDermott — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 01:16:19 +0000

Excellent advice. I have been using this method to clean up my wife’s jpg’s (no small operation). As an added refinement, I work on Pro Photo colour space and 16 bit. When I export I set srgb jpg 60%. As a consequence, even major chances do not cause any banding – the histogram for the jpg shows no gaps!
Any comments?

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 02:58:56 +0000

I second Ken’s question from June 6th, 2008.

Is there a way to export a batch of unedited photos without re encoding them? If I haven’t made any adjustments (other than the embedded IPTC info), I’d like the originals exported.

To repeat his scenario:
I have 100 photos and made adjustments to 50.
Export the 50 photos with their changes and the original files for the un-retouched 50.

By: Char

Char — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 20:45:35 +0000

Help ! Hope someone has a n answer, Processing raw files in LR2 after sorting , editing I batch process to convert to jpg without deleting the raw files. I store the raw & jpg in separate locations. Here’s the problem. After exporting to jpg the files are not being sorted in the correct order that I have put them It sorts the photographs by file number. I shoot weddings with two cameras and use LR to put the wedding in chronological order . Very frustrating after hours of work to be undone when converting..Any suggestions?
Thanks!

By: KC

KC — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 17:12:27 +0000

Good to know. What do you recommend for image quality and size for the processed JPEG for the best results?

By: Don Kim

Don Kim — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 23:45:37 +0000

I’ve also noticed that Lightroom modifies the date taken time on my original jpg. I upload to a service that extracts that date and displays my photos in the order I took them (a bit of a shameless plug: that service is http://www.twango.com, which became share.ovi.com after we were acquired by Nokia). I will take Jeff’s suggestion above and make the pictures read-only from now on.

Has anyone found out a way to save the edits I make in Lightroom to the original jpg, while retaining the metadata? (of course, this is a bit paradoxical with my statement above about making my pictures read-only…)

Or is there a way to copy the metadata from the original jpg into a jpg I export with the changes applied?

Thanks!

By: Ken

Ken — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 03:21:35 +0000

A feature were Lightroom wouldn’t alter JPEGs that have not been editted during the export process. For example:
1. I take 100 Photos
2. I apply edits to 50 of the photos, the other 50 look fine as is.
3. I want to export all the photos to a new folder with new names based on the event.
4. Of course my altered JPEGs will need to be reprocessed and resaved with varying degrees of JPEG compression. But the photos that were not altered I’d simply like copied to the new folder with in sequence filenames and any altered metadata.

Maybe an option in the export to “Copy unaltered photos to new file without recompressing”

Or maybe there is a way to do this already that I don’t know about.

By: Ale

Ale — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 16:39:00 +0000

Hi!, exist any possibility of keep the original JPG file + XMP of the changes in the same folder like RAWs? I know that can make this with RAWs but this don´t happen with JPGs. I like keep in the backup the original JPG + XMP. Any idea or tip? Thanks!!!