JPEGMini promises smaller files - PetaPixel shows Photoshop quality quirk

Just tried this out. It indeed does work. Pretty impressive. Regardless if some say it's been done before. I can notice a very slight difference but it's very very minor that you'd be hard pressed to see it. Difference is just very fine noise grain. Now if this was available as a plugin for Photoshop that'd be impressive.

I mention again that it works
The biggest advantage is if after a trip I have 5000 photos and 20G ,I wouldn't have time to back up on 5 DVD

Now each JPEG become less than 1 MB and I can fit almost 5000 pics on 1 DVD

I won't worry about hard drive failure any more

I would happily paid $50 if it is available as a program

Gidday Folks

Who uses JPEGs anyway? Just kidding, each to their own.

However I shoot RAW + JPEG and only ever use the JPEGs for end users other than myself - web, email, people who want copies, etc. Otherwise, I only ever do editing with RAW into PSD 16 bit files. These are stored as edited. If for printing at A2 size, the file may be up to 200+ MB. I really don't care! If I need to, I will archive these files onto their own DVDR and the whole lot onto "small" HDDs for backup. I never convert these files to JPEGs for any purpose other than third party distribution.

I don't like throwing data away ... ;).

I already backup my LF/SHQ JPEGs to a "small" 160 GB HDD, and thence as a copy to my laptop HDD. The main backup is for all image files to a number of external 1 TB HDDs, and to DVDRs.

My main image HDD is an internal 2 TB Seagate that cost about Oz $100 ...

regards, john

Haha! So these guys are catching up on what the JPG2000 standard implemented 10 years ago and try to sell it as a new technology?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG_2000

I use the Golden Number%51 since 3-4 years ago, without any research :-)

I tried their service... well, there is some loss of details.
But overall I'm impressed

I actually tested it and it's NOT snake oil. I uploaded a photo (I chose one with a grain effect). It reduced it in half. I downloaded it and overlaid in PS using Difference mode. The differences were very small, almost invisible, but there were differences.

So yeah, the idea itself is not new, but the product itself is real.

no it is no fake
it works

only 18% of original size but indistinguishable 100% crop

After compression I can back up lots of picture in DVD, now all in hard drive and worry about hard drive failure

I would buy the program if it is available

amazing technology.

JPEG size optimization was done years ago by Pegasus imaging if I recall well. Why is it that a big news?

Anyway it's of no interest for digital cameras. What we need is a 16-bits JPEG format. Or any other better format.

The Photoshop JPEG engine explanation is good info though.

Strange to read about this here, because this a clearly snake oil technology. If you look at the background of the "company", everything looks like a huge bubble of air. The comparison images on the website are faked. (same size, same image)
There were big discussions on various pro graphic boards about this some time ago.

The idea is very old. I recall trying a program called AFAIR "JPEG optimizer" several years ago and it was indeed working well. There was even manual optimization when you could decide where in the image to compress more. But today when a 64GB USB flash drive costs $80 it just does not seem that useful.

Ten years ago this kind of thing mattered on the web and for storage. Broadband speeds, 1TB disks and 32Gb SD cards make this advance redundant for most people. Just use level 12 jpg.

The greater the compression, the smaller the file size, the greater the data loss and increase in pixel size and decrease in resolution. This JPEGmini sounds like more amateurish junk. Probably OK for compressing for Email or sending over wireless devices. I would never use it for compressing good quality archived or stored images. I prefer Photoshop level 10, 11, 12. Less than that creates colour distortion and loss of detail and resolution. TIFF format compresses without image loss, for good quality images which need storing as well, it compresses with layers.

Good hint and finally I know why I never save higher than 10.

I actually don't understand why JPEG-XR never made it with broad public acception. It offers so much more than JPEG, and competes well with JPEG2000.

I know JPEG-XR was designed & proposed by Microsoft, which said it would be royalty-free. So if only Adobe would have embraced it, it would have been much better for us all.

I've not read the article. But I have tried out the Jpegmini service with various images. The very first image I tried grew fractionally larger.
Others showed results broadly similar to the various photo-editors I tried (a random selection).

Overall I've come away with the feeling that there's nothing useful here. In terms of colour fidelity or image detail, I can achieve similar (or possibly better) results with existing tools.

What about 8,9,10,11 and 12 which I use regularly? I never use 6 or 7 unless E-mailing pictures :-)

I'm a little confused. I get that it sounds like, in certain circumstances where color fidelity matters, that these facts suggest saving Jpegs at "6" rather than "7" on Photoshop's compressdion slider. But, does that mean that color is more true at 6 than 8? How about 10 or 12? Is the color still better at 6? It doesn't sound reasonable, but I'd like to know from someone who has a greater understanding of this issue than I do. What about it? What compression numbers on the slider yield significantly more accurate color, as well as, of course, better results regarding the other methods of evaluation of compression results, such as detail retention and artifacts?

I'm confused. Is this an article about JPEGMini or Photoshop compression methodolgy?

Take any JPEG, open it with "Paint" (the simple program the comes bundled with Windows) and simply do a FILE-->SAVE. Much smaller file size and minimal IQ loss.

Considering the current low price of memory cards and storage space.... is more compression (or more efficient compression) really necessary?

Fifteen years ago, I would say "definitely.
Today... I'm not so sure.

I don't think it would work very well to take a jpeg optimized with jpegmini, process it, then try to optimize it again. Optimization in the second compression would be different than the first, but the info lost in the first cannot be recreated. So this format should only be used as the last step of PP before exporting. This is true of all jpeg conversions, but probably even more important with such an optimized compression.

Awkwardly enough the same compression can be applied to Nikon JEPGs (and other JPEGs for that matter) with Nikon's ViewNX using the High Quality option, being second to the highest option, Very High Quality. Final image quality looks the same when compared pixel to pixel and in comparing the overall image, the only gain by using JPEGmini is probably +/- 50 to 100 Kb in size and having the images processed by a server rather than your computer, otherwise, there really don't seem to be other advantages, i could be wrong though depending on needs.