JPG Best Quality & Original

No

you can not "improve" the quality of a photo once you take it you can compress it less making it take more space but that does not "addd" quality - it gives you the original quality in a larger file

Exporting as Original gives you what your camera took

JPEG is a compressed format and better quality means less compression

LN

What will you use these photos for? Will they be edited again?

Then use the version that you like best with the smallest file size.

Can't help asking, why are you exporting the photos from iPhoto and rotating them in Preview? Why not rotate them in iPhoto?

That's because if I edit and rotate the pictures in iPhoto, once they're exported and uploaded to SkyDrive(MS), they stay the same...

Two options here:

1. You're exporting worng

or

2. There's a problem with your Library.

What export settings are you using?

So I have to export them and use Preview to rotate them.

You don't.

BTW, do you mean I should use 500KM version then the 3MB version of the pictures? Can you tell me why I should do that?

I assume you mean 500kb (not KM) 😉 ? Because it's the photo you want with the most efficient use of disk space.

Regards

TD

I think I'm exporting with "Original",

Well if you export the Original then you get the Original, and that's not rotated 😉 so it's a case of No 1 above.

As for best quality... well you're doing exactly the same procedures in Preview that you do in iPhoto - with the same choices and outcomes, just more inconveniently. It's even using the same background software to perform the tasks. Put it this way: if I can pick up this hammer here why would I walk around the warehouse first to... pick up this hammer here.

So, import the photos. Rotate them. Export the Photos. Note that to get the rotated version you have to export as something other than Original, so select Jepg. Now you have exactly the same choices under Jpeg quality as you do in Preview.

As for what happens when you choose different settings, a little trial and error will answer those questions for you.

Your camera doesn't actually rotate any pixels in the file, but instead flags it with an instruction: "Display me this way". This is a tag in the Exif metadata.

When you import a file with this tag iPhoto creates a modified version. It does this because most of the apps that integrate with it - email clients, word processors etc - simply don't understand this Exif tag. So if you used the shot in a word processing doc, uploaded it to many Web site etc, the shot would come out sideways.

There's no direct comparison.

Remember I asked this above:

What will you use these photos for? Will they be edited again?

Remember, Jpeg isn't a photo, it's a system of compression. It squashes data to make the smallest possible file size for the data that it can. Higher quality means less squashing. Lower quality means more.

But it's stll the same photo. - regardless of how much squashing has gone on.

But Jpeg is a lossy format. Everytime the file is compressed some data gets thrown away. Viewing doesn't cause recompression, but editing does.

So, in theory, you can start with a 10mb file and eventually end up with an empty file if you keep editing it.

But if the file is never going to be edited again, and if it looks good to you at 50kb or 500kb or 1mb then no problem.

So, the key questions are:

What will the photos be used for? If - say - only to be viewed on line - then the file size doesn't matter. It's just about what looks good to you.

If the file is going to be edited again, then file size is important, and the more the better.

Regards

TD

So does that mean "JPG Best Quality" is the same as "Original", only taking more spaces in photo sizes?

No, it is not the same:

Bets quality means that the image will be encoded in a way, that needs a lot of data and will result in a large file size, but preserve the image information as good as possible.

"Original" means, that no compression will be done at all, and the original file will be exported. If your original is asmall jpeg file with very high compression and poor quality, then exporting as original will give you an exact copy of this file, you keep the small file size.

If you export the same file with the jpeg setting "JPG Best Quality", then the jpeg conversion will create a much larger new file. The best quality setting is wasted on a jpeg that is alredy highly compressed. To pick the optimal jpeg setting on export you need to know the quality of the image you have. Don't use a quality setting that is better than the one your data have.

And dont use a quality setting that you do not need, as TD explained above.

Regards

Léonie