Aperture Export - Unnecessary compression of unedited images?

Aperture NEVER compresses the Master image. If you make Adjustments, those Adjustments are held in a separate file called a Version. While lots of us prefer to work with RAW files, this is actually one of the best reasons around to use Aperture for JPEG.

You can export either Versions - at any degree of compression you desire, or the Masters, in which case there is no compression at all.

For what it is worth, for most web posting, I create JPEG with a quality of 6 or 7. Based on using the old "Copy for the Web" option that used to exist in Photoshop Elements, that generally produces a near "perfect" copy. This will not work, of course, if you are posting files that are intended to be printed rather than simply viewed on the web.

Aperture is a great program, the Tutorial is well worth the money to help you get all you can out of the program.

Best wishes! 😉

Create a filter that looks for images with no adjustments applied, export the masters for these, export the versions for images that do have adjustments applied.

That's as automatic as it can get without scripting it.

Methinks you are REALLY polishing a brick here. I doubt that anyone is going to notice the difference between a JPEG 12 and a JPEG 10. (And some scholar can tell me at what level compression starts. JPEG compression is a very complex issue.) If you are worried and don't want to keep track of which are Adjusted and which are not (you can tell by the little badge), then export as TIFF. The files will be monsters, however.

This link may be interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG#Compression_ratio_and_artifacts (With the usual caveats about the Wikipedia.)

But again, methinks you miss the point. If you are really worried about absolute quality, the damage was already done in camera when the RAW was first made into a JPEG.

Finally, you are never going to be see the full quality of your image on Shutterfly or any other web host. Which is why most folks specifically make compressed JPEG for faster upload, etc. I go so far as to constrain my posts to about the size of a 23" monitor and most people viewing on the web have a smaller monitor. Similarly, I shift the color profile to sRGB because most people don't have color managed browsers.

So, no, if you REALLY want to be sure that you use the uncompressed file, you will have to export the Master. The nice thing about Aperture is that, unlike Photoshop, you can Adjust your JPEG to your heart's content without ever recompressing it, even by accident.

If you have Photoshop or Elements, then make a copy of a file, and play with the "Save for Web" in split screen. You can try various different compression ratios and determine the point where you can see a difference. HINT: Look for gradient lines in smooth sunset or sunrise skies.

I suspect that, in the end, we will have to agree to differ on how important this is. 😉

Do most of you just accept this, hoping that the quality loss will be so minimal as to not be noticable?

<sigh> I think about this every time I export a group of photos that contain unadjusted photos. Yes, I just accept it. That's one of the reasons I use RAW and TIFF as much as possible. To tell you the truth, I can only notice some JPG artifiacts in a minimal number of photos, and I know the kinds of things to look for. In general, I don't worry about it unless they are going to print, in which case I always export TIFF anyway.

Exporting for electronic view, though, you will probably never, ever notice the difference because the displaying program (especially if it is through the web) will always have to resample the picture to display it on your puny, 1 megapixel monitor.

Exporting for printing through a web service, I haven't done in a while. I assume I used TIFFs, but I'm not sure... However, if i did it again, I would just put aside my worries about file size and go for the highest quality JPG I could.

nathan

When editing only a subset of photos in a project and then exporting them for a service like Shutterfly, the temptation is to select all and export as versions.

This means those files you never edited are getting compressed for no reason.

You're confusing some stuff here. Your Photos and your Files are not the same thing. Your files are not exported unless you export a Master. Any other time you export what's going out are your Photos. You have a variety of options for the files that will then contain your photos. You can choose lossy or lossless, you can choose different levels of compression. But the files you imported are not being compressed because they're not being exported. You're exporting your photos into new files and you choose the level of compession you prefer.

If you don't want to export to new files at different levels of compression, then export your Masters.