Steve,
There really IS substantial quality loss with continuously editting and saving the same file in the JPG format. My opinion is that the simplest way to avoid it is to immediately make a TIF version and edit only that version of the image. ( I suspect this technique is not "news" to you <G> ). As with most issues, there are "shades of grey" in this argument, since results and satisfaction can vary depending upon the nature of the image itself, and the intended use.
I know of a number of instances where people ( my wife , for one ) have editted images painstakingly , saving in the JPG format, and later been disappointed by the results when it came time to resample for printing . My wife does beautiful edits, but she’ll work on a 300×400 pixel image to perfection, and then find that what’s on the screen can’t be duplicated on paper . My maxim is "don’t throw away real pixels " .
🙂
Brent
Essentially I agree with Brent’s assessment. My view is that there is so little time involved in converting to a TIFF or PSD that it’s negligable in comparison to the time spent editing or printing. However, I’m wondering if you really meant you were resaving an image 10 times. Did you mean you opened the image and closed it 10 times? If so, the only time compression took place was the point at which you opened, edited, and saved the changes. If that’s true, then there would be so little loss of quality that it wouldn’t be noticeable. If you’re editing the same image file ten times, you should make enough time to change to a lossless format.
Each time I download an image from my camera, I immediately make a copy in a lossless format and archive the original. That way there’s only one file I have to worry about.
Steve,
Like you, I have found it very difficult to discern any difference in some of my image is that have been reinstated as JPEG images. However, each time you save that image after editing it, there will be some loss of quality. I suspect no one will be able to tell you how much quality will be lost. If you are satisfied with your results, then I wouldn’t worry about it. This would be especially true if you are just printing or viewing small images. But if you ever discover that one of your images is showing some degradation (i.e. JPEG artifacts, etc.) and you decide that you want to enlarge that image, the flaws will be enlarged as well and you will be extremely disappointed. Yes, I speak from experience.
So I have adopted the practice that many have suggested. As soon as I have made any changes to an image, I use the "Save As" option to save the image either as a TIF or a PSD. It really doesn’t take that much extra time to do this, and you have the added bonus of always being able to load the image that was originally downloaded from your camera. Actually what I do is create a folder within the folder for a group of images, and I save all of my edited work to that sub-folder. I think you’ll find that a little extra precaution is well worth it.
Jim
