Post processing JPEGs?

[EMV]

Hi,

I’ve decided to try shoot JPEGs (mainly) instead of raw since i dont want to spend that much time processing every rawfile in lightroom.

However i often feel like cropping, and maybe adjust the tonecurve a little bit and add some vinjett for most of my JPEGs.

My question is if there’s any FREE programs out there that i can use to do this? I’m usually happy with the exposure and colors in the JPEGs.

And also, will this kind of post process degrade the image quality of JPEGs. If so, how much?

Thank you,

Martin

 

[DarnGoodPhotos]

I use Apple Photos on the Mac; it's non destructive.

 

[EMV]

I use Apple Photos on the Mac; it's non destructive.

 

[dmaclau]

OK. Not what you asked, but....

I added Perfectly Clear to my workflow and have moved virtually all my processing from RAW to JPG.

It’s not free however

 

[krassphoto]

Irfanview and FastStone are free and have plenty of tools

 

[rokphish]

Snapseed on phone/tablet.

 

[BK78]

I've used VSCO, Snapseed and various other mobile editing, but Lightroom Mobile is the best I've used. All those basic functions are available for free, along with tone curve, color adjustments and my favorite dehaze. You can even create your own presets. You can push the JPEGs pretty far. In fact, I liked it so much I did not renew my desktop Lightroom and have moved 100% mobile.

 

[EMV]

Didn’t find any straightening tool or vinjett on faststone (yet).

how about degrade in quality with those programs?

 

[krassphoto]

Didn’t find any straightening tool or vinjett on faststone (yet).

how about degrade in quality with those programs?

AFAIK any editing take away some info from the image, therefore degrade quality, in theory at least.

That's why I love Fuji X because its SOOC jpegs are so good, they require little to no PP

 

[EMV]

I've used VSCO, Snapseed and various other mobile editing, but Lightroom Mobile is the best I've used. All those basic functions are available for free, along with tone curve, color adjustments and my favorite dehaze. You can even create your own presets. You can push the JPEGs pretty far. In fact, I liked it so much I did not renew my desktop Lightroom and have moved 100% mobile.

I will check it out. Probably have every tool i need. How about degrade in quality?

i would really prefer something on the computer though.

 

[EMV]

Didn’t find any straightening tool or vinjett on faststone (yet).

how about degrade in quality with those programs?

AFAIK any editing take away some info from the image, therefore degrade quality, in theory at least.

That's why I love Fuji X because its SOOC jpegs are so good, they require little to no PP

Okay.

yes i know and thats why i’m givning the JPEGs a try. But i feel like most of my JPEGs comes out a little bit to flat and need a boost in contrast (and some vinjettering is often nice).

I dont want to ruin the quality of the images though.

 

[Ysarex]

I've used VSCO, Snapseed and various other mobile editing, but Lightroom Mobile is the best I've used. All those basic functions are available for free, along with tone curve, color adjustments and my favorite dehaze. You can even create your own presets. You can push the JPEGs pretty far. In fact, I liked it so much I did not renew my desktop Lightroom and have moved 100% mobile.

I will check it out. Probably have every tool i need. How about degrade in quality?

Degrade in quality: yes with no possible option to not degrade in quality.

To begin with JPEG is a degradation in quality. JPEG is identified by the designers of the algorithm as an archive format and they note in the description of the algorithm that JPEGs are inappropriate for editing.

Any editing of a JPEG causes an interaction between the change applied and the JPEG compression grid that produces damaging artifacts.

That said the loss is on a sliding scale and in the time it took me to write this bazzilions of JPEGs just got edited. Everybody does it. The sliding scale: does it matter if you can't see it? That would be one end of the scale. At the other end is OMG! you totally trashed that photo.

Our cameras are pretty high-res these days and the damage that occurs when editing JPEGs is very small. If the editing is light the damage will remain unseen. The more editing and the more extreme the editing the more acute the damage. Edits to a low-res JPEG that has already been sized for Internet display will be much more obvious. So it's a case of knowing the limits in conjunction with the intended use of the photo. You're putting the photo on your phone and copying it to all the friends and family's phones -- edit JPEGs all you want nobody will see damage. You're making a 20 x 24 inch print using a high-res printer -- print a TIFF file converted from a raw file. It's a sliding scale. You have to place yourself on the scale and be happy with that choice.

i would really prefer something on the computer though.

 

[sluggy_warrior]

darktable is free/open-source, works on Linux, OSX, and Windows. It's very similar to LR (a lot of people even called it a LR-clone

https://www.darktable.org/

But, as krassphoto mentioned, editing JPGs will only degrade them, some editors will degrade them even just opening and resaving (due to JPG compression). And then, there're settings that only available with RAW such as changing white balance or boosting shadow from complete blackness (think about 256 values/pixel in 8-bit JPG vs 4096 values/pixel in 12-bit RAW).

darktable treats JPG and RAW similarly so you can work with either, though, RAW files are treated as first-class citizen and processed in 32-bit pipelines until the final export, so you have all the RAW data available for manipulation through out.

I can process around 100 RAWs in 2-4 hours with darktable (including culling/picking). If the photos are of similar shooting condition, lots of the settings can be copied and pasted to the whole set (white balance, base curve, ..). A bunch of other settings are applied automatically as part of darktable workflow: lens correction, noise reduction, default sharpening.

And if you have a decent graphic card/GPU, that can speeds up darktable multiple times (7x faster for me with GTX 1050Ti comparing to just i5-7300HQ alone).

 

[John R Fletcher]

I use FastStone (free image viewer) as my primary image viewer (it's very fast, good for quick zooming, etc.), and also use it for cropping and rotation (there's a handy rotate feature, any angle).

But coupled with that, I also have Google's free Nik Collection of tools installed and hooked into FastStone (as external programs, easily configurable), so they're only a key press/key combination away (these tools change the source image, btw, so I tend to create copies and work on them).

One of those free tools is Viveza 2. It's fantastic for adjusting levels, shadow adjustments, warmth, as well as the usual brightness, saturation, contrast, etc. Can be applied to the whole image, or you can create 'control points' that adjust individual areas of your image.

Another of the Nik tools is Color Efex Pro 4. There are dozens of effects (to the point of being overwhelming), but the ones I tend to use are Graduated Neutral Density, Vignette Filter, Brilliance/Warmth, and Pro Contrast (although if you get your Viveza adjustments right, this one has less of an effect). In the past, I used the Tonal Contrast effect quite a bit, but have come to the conclusion it's too detrimental to the JPEG (creates a lot of messy artefacts) and Viveza does a much cleaner job (similarly, had used the other Nik tool HDR Efex Pro 2, and that had artefact issues too if you get too carried away with it).

The other amazing Nik tool is Silver Efex Pro 2, which is fantastic for creating b&w work. There are a bunch of useful presets (and useful free ones on the wider internet). It also has a bunch of film simulations built-in, so you can try out a couple of dozen from Kodak, Ilford, Agfa, Fuji (there's an ACROS one, although it's not the greatest) styles from yesteryear.

 

[RoyX]

Hi,

I’ve decided to try shoot JPEGs (mainly) instead of raw since i dont want to spend that much time processing every rawfile in lightroom.

However i often feel like cropping, and maybe adjust the tonecurve a little bit and add some vinjett for most of my JPEGs.

My question is if there’s any FREE programs out there that i can use to do this? I’m usually happy with the exposure and colors in the JPEGs.

And also, will this kind of post process degrade the image quality of JPEGs. If so, how much?

Thank you,

Martin

I use Polarr. Very powerful and easy to use.

It's not totally free, but even free functions are better than any free PS programs.

Another good feature is: once you buy full version, you can use full functions on any platform versions after login. It has PC, Mac, smartphone (iOS, Android) and tablet (iOS, Android) versions.

 

[yardcoyote]

FastStone will do it nicely.

 

[DarnGoodPhotos]

Ysarex wrote:

Any editing of a JPEG causes an interaction between the change applied and the JPEG compression grid that produces damaging artifacts.

Some programs do not change the source JPG allowing you to revert back at any point.

 

[Len-O]

I use FastStone (free image viewer) as my primary image viewer (it's very fast, good for quick zooming, etc.), and also use it for cropping and rotation (there's a handy rotate feature, any angle).

But coupled with that, I also have Google's free Nik Collection of tools installed and hooked into FastStone (as external programs, easily configurable), so they're only a key press/key combination away (these tools change the source image, btw, so I tend to create copies and work on them).

For future reference, the NIK Collection is now the property of DxO and is no longer free. It will cost $69, which is a bargain compare to the $400 it cost before the Google buyout. Google got what it wanted from NIK, *Snapseed*, and then dropped further development and updates before selling to DxO. The photography community was fortunate that Google sold NIK as it was going to be doomed-ware in their hands.

https://nikcollection.dxo.com

 

[Craig268]

If it hasn't been mentioned already, Adobe Photoshop CC works great with jpegs. That's all I use. It's free and works great on a computer.

 

[a_c_skinner]

Save both RAW and JPG.