Losing Quality?

[Wendi Karen]

I have heard that everytime you edit a photo you lose some quality on it.

Is this true and if so, how... everytime you open and close it in the editor or every time you make any change to it (i.e./fix red eye, then whiten teeth, then lessen wrinkles, adjust color, etc.) even if it is opened only once?

I hope this question makes sense.

Wendi

[Bayla]

Wendi,

I think you are referring to saving as a jpg. Jpg is a 'lossy' format and for that reason it is probably better to save anything you are working on and coming back to on a number of occasions as a psd layered file (which you'd probably want to do anyway as it makes more sense to keep your layers intact.) Then when you're finally happy you can save as a jpg. You won't notice a difference in quality from saving as jpgs once or twice anyway - I think someone on this forum experimented recently to see how many times you could open and close a jpg file before you'd significantly notice the difference...

Bayla

[Wendy]

I do just the same as Bayla :)

Wendy

[Bayla]

Wendy,

Where do you think I learnt it from?:D

Bayla

[NickLewis]

You won't notice a difference in quality from saving as jpgs once or twice anyway - I think someone on this forum experimented recently to see how many times you could open and close a jpg file before you'd significantly notice the difference...I think it was TonyW, and, providing that the JPG was saved at high quality, then quite a lot of resaving had to go on. But I can't remember enough about the discussion to have much hope of finding the thread. Searching for "JPG" and "quality" on this forum is going to be like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. :eek:

But, going back to Wendi's orginal question, the quality loss in using JPGs comes about when you resave the image. Keeping the image open and doing multiple edits is not a problem.

Nick

[Wendy]

Bayla ...

Oh that made me laugh :) :)

Wendy

[Wendi Karen]

Okay, thanks Nick. That is exactly what I was asking.

Also, thanks everyone else regarding the saving as psd... I never even thought about that. I recently started doing digital scrapbooking and I open and close and re-work a file several times before I am satisfied with it. So am I understanding that as long as I keep it as the psd layered file and if I re-work it over and over and over I will not experience any loss of quality... is that correct?

Wendi

[Bayla]

Wendi,

Correct. Plus the benefit that if everything is on its own layer you can go back in and make changes whenever you want. The downside is that the files can get big, so make sure you have enough space on your HD!!

Bayla

[BrendaC]

What about this situation? I open a file edit then close it as "save as" and jpeg. I then have the original and a copy, is my original compromised or is it ok since I used "saved as?"

[NickLewis]

Your original is absolutely fine.

Personally, I'd recommend no-one works on a original - always take a copy before starting editing, or save under an different name (which PSE assists you with) for precisely this reason.

Nick

[TonyW]

I think it was TonyW, and, providing that the JPG was saved at high quality, then quite a lot of resaving had to go on. But I can't remember enough about the discussion to have much hope of finding the thread. Searching for "JPG" and "quality" on this forum is going to be like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. :eek:

Nick: I can't remember either but there is a site somewhere that has comparisons and as I recall you really do have to open, and resave it lots of times before you'll ever detect a difference. The other recent thread was from RobertS who did the JPEG quality comparison and concluded that you are wasting disc space if you save at the highest quality settings.

http://www.photoshopelementsuser.com/forum/showthread.php?t=27200

Tony