Exporting the "original file" from Photos gives me a small jpeg image file and a Mov file. Or a .HEIC and .mov files. The jpeg file is not big enough to print an enlargment. I have tried using iCloud from Chrome, same thing.
How do I get at my full sized jpeg image files in the cloud?
iMac 21.5" 4K, macOS 10.15
The 1.4 MB shown in the Info is the size of the HEIC still frame. A HEIC file has a better compression than a JPEG of the same quality. So the size is only half of the size of the JPEG version. If you want to save storage, keep the images as HEIC files and discard the .MOV, if you do not need the LIVE effect.
When you export the current version instead of the original, Photos will render a new image file, depending on the settings for the JPEG quality. If you use "Original Size" with "JPEG Quality: Maximum" the file may have a larger size than the original, because "Maximum" will use nearly no compression at all. Usually "Jpeg Quality: High" will give you an image file of roughly the same size as the original JPEG, but still larger than the HEIC will have been.
The info states the size is 1.4MB in Photo. After export to a hard drive it states 2.4MB .MOV and 1.4 MB HEIC using the export original file. Using the export photo at the maximum jpeg quality setting I get a jpg size of 3.7MB. Is this the actual file size? Why doesn’t the export original give me the actual file size? I thought jpeg was a way to reduce the file size. Should I being using a different file format?
Your images seem to be Live Photos. A Live Photo is a pair of a still frame (JPEG or HEIC) and ad a video component (.MOV or .mp4).
What is the pixel size of the photos in Photos as shown in the Info? A Live Photo has usually the same dimension as a regular JPEG taken with the iPhone, unless you edited the key frame of the live photo.
iCloud original size image download in jpeg format
