How do I get Lightroom 3 to upload my original JPEGs to flickr?

Question

I shoot in JPEG (not a pro yet) and want to publish my photos in my pro account in flickr, is there a way to tell Lightroom 3 to upload my original untouched JPEGs?

In the Flickr Publish Service settings I've unchecked all modifying setings: the "Resize to Fit", "Sharpen For" and "Watermark" options, but I think the problem is the "File Settings->Quality" options which is at 75% and I can't disable it. My photos get uploaded and when I redownload the "original" file it is like 70% smaller than my true original and the quality is severely affected. I've also tried to set Quality to 0% and 100% (thinking they could be "special" values) with similar effects (at 100% the quality is fine for my untrained eye, but file size is bigger than my original, although I could live with it).

My rationale is that JPEG is a lossy compression format and having Lightroom to recompress them is a doubly lossy process (unless I set Quality to 100%, I guess).

But it would be better to simply tell Lightroom to upload the original file.

Asked by rogelio

Answer

Don't believe you can tell LR to do that.

Regardless of whether you import raw or JPEG into LR, LR will always export derivatives of your originals, never the originals themselves.

While LR is good at managing libraries of images, my take is that LR assumes you want to make modifications to jpegs that you've imported, otherwise why import them. This assumption doesn't really apply to raw images, since you'll always be exporting a final result that is in a different file format from the original.

Answered by Conor Boyd

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