Here, every number from 0 to 100 matters and the file size can vary in size considerably. In fact, the “Save for Web” feature of Photoshop works differently, as it uses a different compression algorithm compared to the 0-12 numbers or the percentage in Lightroom. In my original article I wrongly stated that the “Save for Web” feature of Photoshop worked similarly as the percentage field in Lightroom, which is wrong (thanks to Aaron Shepard for catching that!). The same goes for 90% – it is no different than picking 85% quality! Photoshop’s Save for Web Until you get to 85%, nothing really changes. Choosing say 80% quality, is the same thing as choosing 77% or 84%. So what does this mean? It basically means that some numbers don’t matter at all, while others do quite a bit when we use the percentage scale.

* Space Savings represented relative to the largest file size at 100% Quality (27.3 MB) and full resolution (captured with a 20 MP camera)

Now let’s take a quick look at the table below, where the 0-12 values from Photoshop are mapped to percentages: PS JPEG Compression # Here we see the representation of the JPEG compression scale from 0% to 100%. First, here is the screen that shows up when you click “Save” or “Save As” and choose JPEG in Photoshop:Īs you can see, the values you can choose from a represented in a number scale from 0 to 12. This ultimately means that changing from one number to another, like from 85% to 90% might make no difference whatsoever in compression or image size, while changing from 84% to 85% would make a big difference.īelow are the different screens we are used to seeing. Adobe simply mapped the 0 to 12 scale to the percentage scale. The truth is, the percentages we see in Lightroom do not really scale from real 0 to 100 in single digits. While percentages are easier to understand than numbers from 0 to 12, as we relate to 100% being the “best image quality” easier, Adobe also created a confusion as to what number represents what percentage, since the ranges of numbers are not provided in any of the help documents. Photoshop gives us compression levels from 0 to 12 when saving JPEG images through the “Save” or “Save As” dialog, while Lightroom only allows us to input a percentage.

Determining the ideal JPEG quality setting in both Photoshop and Lightroom can be challenging, because we often see two different values to choose from.

Lr enfuse processing jpegs