JPG quality and size settings that actually matter

Every RAW converter and every editor ends at the same dialog, and every photographer has a number they use because someone once said so. Most of the settings do nothing you can see. Four of them decide whether the file is the right size, the right color and the right weight for where it is going. Here they are, with the numbers.

The quality slider, and where it stops mattering

JPEG compression throws away detail the eye is bad at, more as the number drops, and the relationship is not linear. From 100 down to about 92 the file roughly halves in size and nothing visible changes; the encoder is trimming color precision in areas of flat tone. From 92 to 80 the file drops another third and a careful eye starts to see it in skies, skin gradients and dark out of focus areas. Below 75 it is visible to anyone looking. So: 92 to 95 for delivery, where you want no visible cost and half the storage; 80 to 85 for web and social, where the platform will recompress anyway; 100 never, because it costs double the bytes for a difference no screen can show. Kepla's browser converter defaults to 92 for that reason.

Long edge: the four sizes you need

Resizing is the setting that changes the file most, and the right answer is where the picture is going, not what the sensor made.

One rule inside that: downsize in one step from the full develop, not from an already resized JPG, and let the resampler do it. Two step resizing softens. Every serious converter, including the browser tool, resamples from the full image.

Color space: sRGB, and why it is not optional

A JPG can be tagged Adobe RGB or ProPhoto, and if you are sending it to a lab that asked for it, do that. For everything else, sRGB. Browsers, phones, social platforms and most client screens assume sRGB and many ignore the embedded profile entirely; an Adobe RGB JPG on a phone looks dull and slightly green. The wide gamut lived in your RAW and in your edit. The delivery lives in sRGB. A neutral develop from a browser converter is sRGB by construction.

EXIF: keep, strip, and the one thing to always strip

Keep camera, lens, exposure, date and your copyright. It costs a few kilobytes, it is how Lightroom and a gallery still read the file's story, and it is how a stolen frame is traced. Keep keywords if you use them; metadata is a search signal. Strip the maker's notes on export; they are large and they carry serial numbers. And always strip GPS on anything leaving your machine, unless the client asked for it: a wedding's coordinates are the couple's home. The browser converter writes a clean block with camera, lens, exposure and date and never copies GPS, which is the right default. The metadata guide has the full map of what lives in a file.

Everything else in the dialog

Output sharpening for screen, standard, is fine and mostly invisible. Progressive versus baseline JPEG does not matter anymore. Chroma subsampling is decided by the quality setting in most encoders. Limit file size to a number is a worse way to set quality. Watermarks are a branding decision, not an export one. Rename on export is a workflow decision covered by the file naming system. Everything else is defaults you have never changed and do not need to.

And before any of this, the frames had to be chosen, which means the misses had to be cleared. That is the job Kepla does first, on your Mac: it clears the obvious misses from a card in minutes, names the reason on each one, and leaves the choosing to you. Request Founding Access.

FAQ