recompression in jpegs

[scottfeldstein]

I am the proud owner of a Canon PowerShot G2. I pretty much always shoot jpeg (minimum compression) instead of RAW because of performance, space issues and also I don't want to have to use Canon software just to handle the photos in the computer. I find the quality of the minimal compressed jpeg to be well worth the initial quality loss. But what about subsequent editing such as color correction?

I use Apple's iPhoto to import and keep track of all my pictures but the color correction is not very sophisticated. For that I use Photoshop 7, choosing "edit in external editor" in iPhoto to launch the image in Photoshop. When in PS, I can do a fairly sophisticated levels or curves adjustment and then save it back to iPhoto. This works fine, and iPhoto even keeps the original in case I need to revert back to it at some point.

But isn't my new, color-corrected jpeg of inferior quality to the original simply because saving it in jpeg format recompresses it? That is, it's undergone more loss because it's been edited and saved? Are there ways around recompression when saving?

Tactics, strategies, recommendations?

[Roger_Cavanagh]

But isn't my new, color-corrected jpeg of inferior quality to the original simply because saving it in jpeg format recompresses it? That is, it's undergone more loss because it's been edited and saved?

Yes.

Are there ways around recompression when saving?

Yes, save the file in a lossless format such as TIFF or the PSD format, the first time you edit the image. When you have completely finished editing, you could save a JPG version, if you need.

Regards,