Achieving lossless JPEG quality?

DJ
Posted By
Dave_Jansen
Apr 25, 2008
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4455
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What is the best way to achieve lossless JPEG quality in Photoshop? Is setting the quality of the file to "maximum" essentially lossless? I’ve been using .png files a lot more, but some of my clients still don’t welcome that format. Thanks!
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DM
dave_milbut
Apr 25, 2008
no jpg save is lossless.
DJ
Dave_Jansen
Apr 25, 2008
I thought I heard that some types of JPEGs are lossless. Was I misinformed?
D
DGWaters
Apr 25, 2008
If you look up jpeg in wikipedia it’s described as

a commonly used method of compression for photographic images

but further down states that there are

variations on the standard baseline JPEG that are lossless

which was a surprise to me.
CY
curt_young
Apr 25, 2008
I believe so, but one may not see the effect at the higher resolution rates until you save it numerous times, and have it enlarged a lot. Just what I heard so don’t take it as fact.
RK
Rob_Keijzer
Apr 25, 2008
I think the term "Lossless" in combination with "Jpeg" can be found in lossless rotation.

This can, for instance be done with Irfanview. Rotation is simply moving the discrete pixels around without parsing an subsequent recompiling them. (correct me if I’m wrong).

Rob
JM
J_Maloney
Apr 25, 2008
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG-LS>
G
gowanoh
Apr 25, 2008
If you use the maximum quality/minimum compression settings and your clients are simply viewing your files there will be no significant loss of quality for the intended use of simply reviewing an image. They will see a very high quality image from their viewpoint.
Clearly jpeg is the wrong format for storing images that will be further processed, used for purposes like offset printing or need to be archived in pristine quality.
DM
dave_milbut
Apr 25, 2008
jpeg2000 does lossless, but it’s not exactly the same as jpeg
M
mesa
Apr 26, 2008
wrote:
What is the best way to achieve lossless JPEG quality in Photoshop? Is setting the quality of the file to "maximum" essentially lossless? I’ve been using .png files a lot more, but some of my clients still don’t welcome that format. Thanks!

http://www.hpl.hp.com/loco/

download the photshop plugin

r
EG
Ed_Grenzig
Apr 26, 2008
See this link on jpeg.org
lossless or lossy jpeg.

< http://www.jpeg.org/faq.phtml?action=show_answer&questio n_id=q404fa5e29aeb6>

Ed
MD
Michael_D_Sullivan
Apr 26, 2008
Lossless JPEG is a bit of a misnomer. It is part of the original JPEG standard (Annex H to CCITT Recommendation T.81), but it does not use the compression technique (DCT compression) that is the primary feature of JPEG, often referred to as JPEG compression. Instead it uses either Hoffmann or arithmetic coding. It also can be used for 16-bit image data, unlike the lossy JPEG format. I’m not sure what the point was to it, given that there are other lossless compressed and non-compressed formats, such as TIFF. It has rarely been implemented, probably for that very reason. According to the Wikipedia entry for Lossless JPEG <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lossless_JPEG>, it has been used in some medical imaging applications and is used in, of all things, DNG and some cameras’ RAW formats (perhaps the encoding technique is used, rather than the image format). There two other techniques mentioned there: JPEG-2000, mentioned above, and JPEG-LS, which is nearly lossless.
GH
Gernot_Hoffmann
Apr 27, 2008
Michael,

his name is Huffman.

Best regards –Gernot Hoffmann

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