[bcricks]

I have a quick question. I've read about a professional digital photographer who takes pictures in JPEG format, opens the files on his computer, then immediately saves them in PSD file format. According to the article, he does this because the JPEG files deteriorate over time and he wants to preserve the quality of his pictures.
Has anyone heard of this before, and if so, is it worth the hassle of importing digital pictures in Image Capture, opening them all in Photoshop, saving them all in PSD format, then organizing them all in iPhoto?
-bcricks

[couch11]

I think what he means is that when you open up a jpeg image and edit it and resave it to jpeg format you are actually deteriorating the image because you are recompressing an already compressed file. It's better if you edit a file format that isn't compressed first than save it compressed for use in a web page, email, or whatever.

[shadowshok]

yes im now learning this too, i will never save something important as a jpeg again until i am done with whatever I am doing to it. its not that they degrade over time, its they degrade the more u compress them, ie: saving over and over

[Craig_McD]

Remember that you can chose the quality of the compression on your jpeg. For typical web applications I often chose '4', but if there is more detail or text than maybe '7'. If it is my dog and I want to keep a copy for a long time, just chose '10 or 12' or maximum, and save. Jpeg is lossy compression, but you can decide the overall quality. The better the quality, the larger the file size.
CM

[shadowshok]

does this mean if u allways save at highest quality then it wont lose quality????

[MarinerOne]

You're definitely better off saving the Photoshop image file as a "level 12" (in PS7) than at a level 5, for instance. It'll be a bigger file size compressed, but you're going to retain a larger percentage, if not all, of the original file image.
When in doubt, save as a "Level 12", or the lowest compression setting. Better yet, if you have the space, save it as the native .psd file format. With CD burners and massive hard drives, this isn't the concern that it once was. Preserving image quality is always desireable!
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PS: One other feature in Photoshop, is the Batch command. This is found under FILE > AUTOMATE > BATCH, and with this feature, you can download all your digital pics from your camera, and then "batch process" them, say in this case, from .jpeg files to .psd files, with new file names. You'll have to read about this feature, but you can do this all automatically, without having to manually convert each one.