Newbie question on editing with jpeg files and quality...

jwax863 said:

Hello all,

I work in Photoshop 7 and take pics with a Canon Digital Rebel. I
just keep my format on "large" so that I get high-quality jpeg
files. I don't shoot in RAW because I'm too lazy and am quite happy
w/ the high-quality jpeg files.

So here's my question...in Photoshop, each time I make a major
edit, I'll save the file again as a high-quality jpeg but with an
incremented file name. This allows me to keep a high-level history
of the edits in case I want to back to a major phase. Am I making a
mistake by sticking to jpeg during my editing? Will my file get
progressively degraded by doing this? Would I be better off first
converting my jpeg to a tiff or psd and then saving the history
milestones?

I started saving as PSDs last night; but each PSD was over 50MB!!
yikes! While I don't see any noticeable degredation w/ the
JPEG-only approach, I'm wondering if I'm still making a big mistake.

Thanks in advance for your advice!!
Julie

Click to expand...

digitall said:

If you save the original jpeg as a TIFF then the TIFF can be worked
on and saved with lossless compression although the file will, of
course, be quite large.

I have no doubt others will correct me if I am wrong.

jwax863 said:

Hello all,

I work in Photoshop 7 and take pics with a Canon Digital Rebel. I
just keep my format on "large" so that I get high-quality jpeg
files. I don't shoot in RAW because I'm too lazy and am quite happy
w/ the high-quality jpeg files.

So here's my question...in Photoshop, each time I make a major
edit, I'll save the file again as a high-quality jpeg but with an
incremented file name. This allows me to keep a high-level history
of the edits in case I want to back to a major phase. Am I making a
mistake by sticking to jpeg during my editing? Will my file get
progressively degraded by doing this? Would I be better off first
converting my jpeg to a tiff or psd and then saving the history
milestones?

I started saving as PSDs last night; but each PSD was over 50MB!!
yikes! While I don't see any noticeable degredation w/ the
JPEG-only approach, I'm wondering if I'm still making a big mistake.

Thanks in advance for your advice!!
Julie

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Kalus said:

digitall said:

If you save the original jpeg as a TIFF then the TIFF can be worked
on and saved with lossless compression although the file will, of
course, be quite large.

I have no doubt others will correct me if I am wrong.

jwax863 said:

Hello all,

I work in Photoshop 7 and take pics with a Canon Digital Rebel. I
just keep my format on "large" so that I get high-quality jpeg
files. I don't shoot in RAW because I'm too lazy and am quite happy
w/ the high-quality jpeg files.

So here's my question...in Photoshop, each time I make a major
edit, I'll save the file again as a high-quality jpeg but with an
incremented file name. This allows me to keep a high-level history
of the edits in case I want to back to a major phase. Am I making a
mistake by sticking to jpeg during my editing? Will my file get
progressively degraded by doing this? Would I be better off first
converting my jpeg to a tiff or psd and then saving the history
milestones?

I started saving as PSDs last night; but each PSD was over 50MB!!
yikes! While I don't see any noticeable degredation w/ the
JPEG-only approach, I'm wondering if I'm still making a big mistake.

Thanks in advance for your advice!!
Julie

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

jwax863 said:

Hello all,

I work in Photoshop 7 and take pics with a Canon Digital Rebel. I
just keep my format on "large" so that I get high-quality jpeg
files. I don't shoot in RAW because I'm too lazy and am quite happy
w/ the high-quality jpeg files.

So here's my question...in Photoshop, each time I make a major
edit, I'll save the file again as a high-quality jpeg but with an
incremented file name. This allows me to keep a high-level history
of the edits in case I want to back to a major phase. Am I making a
mistake by sticking to jpeg during my editing? Will my file get
progressively degraded by doing this? Would I be better off first
converting my jpeg to a tiff or psd and then saving the history
milestones?

I started saving as PSDs last night; but each PSD was over 50MB!!
yikes! While I don't see any noticeable degredation w/ the
JPEG-only approach, I'm wondering if I'm still making a big mistake.

Thanks in advance for your advice!!
Julie

Click to expand...

hap said:

I'm trying to understand this also....so if I copy the the
background layer and do my photoshop edits then, file> save as my
original jpg file stays intact without degrading it???

Click to expand...

hap said:

Kalus said:

digitall said:

If you save the original jpeg as a TIFF then the TIFF can be worked
on and saved with lossless compression although the file will, of
course, be quite large.

I have no doubt others will correct me if I am wrong.

jwax863 said:

Hello all,

I work in Photoshop 7 and take pics with a Canon Digital Rebel. I
just keep my format on "large" so that I get high-quality jpeg
files. I don't shoot in RAW because I'm too lazy and am quite happy
w/ the high-quality jpeg files.

So here's my question...in Photoshop, each time I make a major
edit, I'll save the file again as a high-quality jpeg but with an
incremented file name. This allows me to keep a high-level history
of the edits in case I want to back to a major phase. Am I making a
mistake by sticking to jpeg during my editing? Will my file get
progressively degraded by doing this? Would I be better off first
converting my jpeg to a tiff or psd and then saving the history
milestones?

I started saving as PSDs last night; but each PSD was over 50MB!!
yikes! While I don't see any noticeable degredation w/ the
JPEG-only approach, I'm wondering if I'm still making a big mistake.

Thanks in advance for your advice!!
Julie

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

dpnew said:

hap said:

I'm trying to understand this also....so if I copy the the
background layer and do my photoshop edits then, file> save as my
original jpg file stays intact without degrading it???

Click to expand...

If you save your jpg under a different file name, nothing changes
in your original jpg. It's the same process when you open up
document A on your computer, make some changes, and use Save As to
save it as document B. If you go back and look at document A,
there won't be any changes.

Assuming you have enough storage on your pc, open up your jpg, do
your retouching, and then use Save As to save the file as a .psd
file. That way all your layers will be preserved, and your jpg
will be left untouched. Your jpg's are your digital negatives, so
you don't ever want to change them.

The original poster said he has major edit points in his retouching
he wants to preserve. What he should do is open up his original jpg
file, do some retouching and when he gets to a major edit point, he
should use Save As, choose jpg as the file type, and save it under
a new file name. Then, when he is done with his retouching, he
should use Save As to save the file as a .psd file if he needs to
do further retouching later.

What he should not do--which it sounds like he is doing--is use
Save As to save it as another jpg file, say retouch1.jpg, and then
later open up retouch1.jpg and continue his retouching, and then
resave as retouch2.jpg He shouldn’t do that because when he saves
the original as retouch1.jpg, he degrades a copy of the original
image which is then saved as retough1.jpg. (By the way, you know
you are degrading a .jpg when it asks you what quality setting for
the compression.) Then, when he uses save as to save retouch1.jpg
as retouch2.jpg, he degrades a copy of retouch1.jpg which degrades
the image again. Note that he is not changing the original jpg
file in the whole process, so it remains intact.

You can save a .psd file as many times as you want and nothing will
happen to the original .jpg file. In addition, resaving a .psd
file does not degrade the .psd file.

dpnew said:

Kalus said:

digitall said:

If you save the original jpeg as a TIFF then the TIFF can be worked
on and saved with lossless compression although the file will, of
course, be quite large.

I have no doubt others will correct me if I am wrong.

jwax863 said:

Hello all,

I work in Photoshop 7 and take pics with a Canon Digital Rebel. I
just keep my format on "large" so that I get high-quality jpeg
files. I don't shoot in RAW because I'm too lazy and am quite happy
w/ the high-quality jpeg files.

So here's my question...in Photoshop, each time I make a major
edit, I'll save the file again as a high-quality jpeg but with an
incremented file name. This allows me to keep a high-level history
of the edits in case I want to back to a major phase. Am I making a
mistake by sticking to jpeg during my editing? Will my file get
progressively degraded by doing this? Would I be better off first
converting my jpeg to a tiff or psd and then saving the history
milestones?

I started saving as PSDs last night; but each PSD was over 50MB!!
yikes! While I don't see any noticeable degredation w/ the
JPEG-only approach, I'm wondering if I'm still making a big mistake.

Thanks in advance for your advice!!
Julie

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

dpnew said:

The original poster said he has major edit points in his retouching
he wants to preserve. What he should do is open up his original jpg
file, do some retouching and when he gets to a major edit point, he
should use Save As, choose jpg as the file type, and save it under
a new file name.

Click to expand...

dpnew said:

What he should not do--which it sounds like he is doing--is use
Save As to save it as another jpg file, say retouch1.jpg, and then
later open up retouch1.jpg and continue his retouching, and then
resave as retouch2.jpg He shouldn’t do that because when he saves
the original as retouch1.jpg, he degrades a copy of the original
image which is then saved as retough1.jpg.

Click to expand...

Lorraine said:

I use PSP. I open up my jpeg, do all of my editing and then save it
as a jpeg with another file name. I'm assuming this is wrong?

Click to expand...

David M. said:

jwax863 said:

Hello all,

I work in Photoshop 7 and take pics with a Canon Digital Rebel. I
just keep my format on "large" so that I get high-quality jpeg
files. I don't shoot in RAW because I'm too lazy and am quite happy
w/ the high-quality jpeg files.

So here's my question...in Photoshop, each time I make a major
edit, I'll save the file again as a high-quality jpeg but with an
incremented file name. This allows me to keep a high-level history
of the edits in case I want to back to a major phase. Am I making a
mistake by sticking to jpeg during my editing? Will my file get
progressively degraded by doing this? Would I be better off first
converting my jpeg to a tiff or psd and then saving the history
milestones?

I started saving as PSDs last night; but each PSD was over 50MB!!
yikes! While I don't see any noticeable degredation w/ the
JPEG-only approach, I'm wondering if I'm still making a big mistake.

Thanks in advance for your advice!!
Julie

Click to expand...

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cultures, still a primitive planet with inhabitants struggling to
understand themselves.... don´t buy a computer there!

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Steve Balcombe said:

Steve Balcombe said:

I use PSP. I open up my jpeg, do all of my editing and then save it
as a jpeg with another file name. I'm assuming this is wrong?

Click to expand...

Yes it's wrong, although you possibly won't see any problem.
There's been some confusion here so let's see if another
explanation will clear it up...

TIFF and PSD both save every detail of every pixel exactly as it
should be. They are 'non-lossy' formats, they keep all the data
intact. In that sense they are like a word processor file - when
you open it again you see exactly what you saved. You can save it a
thousand times and it will never change.

JPEG is different in that it uses some very clever programming to
make an approximation to the image data which can be saved in a
much smaller space. It relies on the fact that the eye won't see
the differences between the original and the approximation. You can
fine-tune the degree of approximation, so a high-quality JPEG is
very close to the original (but still not identical) and a lower
quality one is less accurate - but it uses that trade-off to make a
smaller file.

JPEG is a storage-only format, you can't directly manipulate JPEG
data. So every time you open a JPEG file it has to be converted to
TIFF, or another non-lossy format, in the memory of your PC. But
this TIFF now contains degraded data derived from the JPEG file. If
you then edit the image and save again, you will apply a further
approximation to the already-degraded data. Do that several times
and the errors accumulate.

In practice, if you simply open the original camera JPEG, crop it
and adjust the colours, and save it just once on a high-quality
JPEG setting, you would be unlikely to see any problems. That is
not to say I would recommend it - just that you will usually get
away with it.

My own choice is to always store edited images in PSD format,
never JPEG. Disk space is cheap these days, why risk spoiling an
image? If you need a JPEG copy to show on the web, make one
specifically for that purpose.

Steve B.

Click to expand...

Lorraine said:

That makes sense now. I'm assuming that PSP would have it's own
filename extension or is PSD universal?

Click to expand...

Lorraine said:

That makes sense now. I'm assuming that PSP would have it's own
filename extension or is PSD universal?

Click to expand...