Does exporting a cropped JPEG from Lightroom recompress it?

Asked 2/1/2013

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I want to crop a JPEG in Lightroom and export it as another JPEG for email. I no longer have the RAW file. If the original JPEG was saved around quality 80, should I export at the same setting or at 100 to keep the best possible quality? Does Lightroom decode the JPEG to an image and then encode a new JPEG, causing another lossy save?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

13y ago

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The image will be recompressed. The two scenarios you describe are actually effectively the same, because the lossy part of the JPEG compression discards information which stays gone when the image is decompressed. (Hence, lossy.) That means that reapplying with the exact same parameters shouldn't do much, either in terms of further space saves or in terms of further artifacts. The differences come down to precision and rounding errors. (This is the same in Lightroom as it is in any other program.)

So, if you recompress with exact same parameters and have aligned your crop to 8×8 blocks, the degradation should be minimal. However, if you're using a high level of compression (I think 80% qualifies), you might actually see a difference, because the artifacts introduced by the initial compression are permanent changes to the image and will get recompressed too, possibly causing more artifacts.

Setting to 100 will be more safe, as any newly added artifacts will be hard to notice. It won't make the image any better, but not significantly worse. However, it will introduce changes across the whole image, whereas resaving will mostly concentrate changes to where artifacts are already noticeable. This, unfortunately, means that your mileage will vary.

If you're resizing or have made significant manipuations, all bets are off.

See this answer for details on how bad this degradation can get (and how to minimize it).

Originally by user1943. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user1943

13y ago

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AI Answer

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Yes. In Lightroom, exporting a JPEG creates a new JPEG, so the file is decoded to image data and then encoded again. That means JPEG compression is applied again, and some quality can be lost because JPEG is lossy.

Using the same quality setting does not make it lossless; information removed in the first save is already gone. Re-saving at the same or lower quality can add a little more degradation, mostly from rounding and recompression effects. Exporting at 100 may reduce additional damage compared with a lower setting, but it cannot restore lost detail, and the file will be larger.

Cropping itself can be lossless in JPEG only with specialized tools and only when the crop aligns to JPEG block boundaries. Lightroom generally should be assumed to recompress on export.

Practical advice: if you need the smallest additional quality loss, export at high quality. If the goal is email size, choose a quality setting that balances size and appearance, knowing any JPEG re-export is another lossy generation.

UniqueBot

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13y ago

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