External HD Compressing Pictures

[Arengorn]

I have two external HDs, a 1TB Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex and a 1TB LaCie.
On my MacBook Air, when I pass a picture from my camera to either one of the drives, they appear to shrink in size and quality. Both drives are in HFS+ filesystem, and this lossy compression is happening automatically.
Does anyone know why this is happening, and how can i turn it off so that the pictures on the external drive are full quality?

 

[Tumbleweed666]

How do you "pass the picture" ?
Do you just copy it?
Are you sure its being compressed, eg the file size is definitely smaller?

 

[Arengorn]

How do you "pass the picture" ?
Do you just copy it?
Are you sure its being compressed, eg the file size is definitely smaller?

I just drag and drop from iPhoto to the drive. On iPhoto its a 23MB RAW, on the drive its a 3MB .jpg

 

[Tumbleweed666]

Then its obviously iPhoto thats doing it.
Why dont you just copy them from the original source (SD card?) to the location you want rather than via iPhoto?
Or, dont drag and drop, use file >export, kind =original

 

[Altemose]

I just drag and drop from iPhoto to the drive. On iPhoto its a 23MB RAW, on the drive its a 3MB .jpg

Use Image Capture to import the photos using traditional file management. iPhoto must be your problem. If you export from iPhoto, ensure you are choosing full quality in the Export menu.

 

[Tumbleweed666]

Use Image Capture to import the photos using traditional file management. iPhoto must be your problem. If you export from iPhoto, ensure you are choosing full quality in the Export menu.

He needs to select"original" to get the raws, as the default is JPEG export.

 

[Arengorn]

Using the export option as original worked, thanks a lot guys!