Export 100% quality photos with metadata?

Question

I've spent hours searching the web and this forum but can't figure out how to do this.
SUMMARY:
How do I export a set of photos from iPhoto '09 while preserving the photo's image quality and its metadata? I want a 100% identical copy of the photo to be exported.
DETAILS:
I've noticed throughout this forum that when people ask how to move their photos to another computer or to use with a different photo tool, whilst preserving metadata, the normal answer is to use File-->Export. The problem, I'm finding, is that you don't get an exact copy of the photo that's in iPhoto ––OR–– you don't get the metadata included with the export, depending on which export choices you make.
1. If you choose to Export the photo(s) in Current or Original, then you get a 100% quality photo but you don't get all the metadata: Location, Keywords, Title. (You do get the original metadata that was put there by your digicam or scanner prior to importing into iPhoto, however.)
2. If you just drag the photo(s) out of the iPhoto window, you get an identical copy of the original without the extended metadata, as in the previous method.
3. If you choose to Export the photo(s) in JPEG, then you can include the Location, Keyword, and Title metadata. However, the exported photo is not the same size as the original.
- JPEG Quality: High results in photos that are about 1/2 the size of the original.
- JPEG Quality: Maximum results in photos that are about TWICE the size of the original.
I don't really understand what it means to take a 2 MB JPEG iPhoto original from my digicam and export it in Maximum resulting in a 4 MB JPEG copy. All that extra size surely cannot be worth anything, as the best you can get is what was in the original. So you're doubling the size for no benefit. Actually, it seems likely that the copy is WORSE than the original because of lossy file-format conversion errors, similar to why it's a bad idea to convert a 128kbs AAC song to a 128kbs MP3 song in iTunes, or make a copy of a cassette tape (for those of you old enough to remember analog).
The Crux Dilemma: It appears that I can EITHER
1. export a 100% identical copy of my photo but lose my extended metadata,
2. export a modified (either 1/2- or Double-size) JPEG copy that has all the metadata.
This is frustrating me. My friends and I took hundreds of pictures. I've imported them into iPhoto, edited them, Keyword tagged them, GeoTagged them, and now I want to give them their 100%-quality copies of the photos, and I can't figure out how to do it.
Any suggestions?
Thanks,
David
Message was edited by: Longwalker

Answer 1

Terence, thank you for your quick reply!
You basically confirmed what I found out by trial-and-error.
Unfortunately, I think the news is bad. Here's why:
A typical picture in my iPhoto library, a JPEG taken by a compact digicam, is 1.8 MB. Let's compare that to the sizes of the same picture when exported using the various options:
1.8 MB - Current or Original; - metadata not included.
11.4 MB - TIFF - lossless, all metadata included
3.1 MB - JPEG Maximum - lossy but all metadata included
0.7 MB - JPEG High - lossy but all metadata included
You wrote "For my money the best bet is the tiff". I know tiff's are the highest quality format (non-lossy), but, in my case anyway, they're 6.3 X larger.
Is it really true that the only way to move my photos out of iPhoto while preserving 100% of the quality and all the extended metadata is to increase the size of my photos over 6 times? Really?
That seems a bit ridiculous. Consider a library of 10,000 photos averaging 2 MB each (which is on the small side these days). That library would be at least 20 GB (not really considering all the additional space used by thumbnails, dupes, etc). But if I want to export all those photos in a lossless way while preserving metadata, the size will jump to over 126 GB!!
Many of us have Macs with hard drives large enough to easily handle a 20GB iPhoto library, but if that library suddenly exported itself into a 126 GB monster, that would challenge many of our hard drives.
Is there really no other way?