Image Quality

I heard recently that there is some loss of image quality when saving .jpg files. Is it true that artifacting occurs more each time an image is saved...i.e. camera to hard drive to CD, etc.?

Yes it is true jpg file degrade each time they are saved, that is why you keep the raw file and save the jpg from the raw each time. RAW is your negative.

I shoot mostly in .jpg so therefore, what is the best way to archive images while retaining the highest quality?

Save as the maximum setting in Photoshop.. someone on here did a test sometime where he saved each file something like 12 times on each setting and there was no noticeable difference on the max setting whereas dropping too far below it just got nasty.

I tend to do all my manipulations from RAW and save once; the few times I go back and do something different I don't notice any difference in the quality of the image when I save it again at 12 quality.

Does that mean my jpeg is no longer viewable to aunt Marie when she received it from uncle Joe who got it from grandpa whom was sent to by sis Mary Kay who copied from Ms. Giselle who stole it from cousin Leo whom i forwarded to in an email?
My grand kids or great grand kids (if i live that long) probably won't get to see the jpegs i take today. That's sad.

Possibly because a max jpg from my 20D is about 2,754 KB. The exact same shot with the jpg extracted from the 12-bit RAW "negative" is 4,315 KB which is 1.57X larger.
Whatever info is in my jpg is a lot more detailed than what comes right out of the camera.

talford wrote in post #3499713
I shoot mostly in .jpg so therefore, what is the best way to archive images while retaining the highest quality?

My suggestion would be that once you've edited an image, except for output sharpening, to save it as an 8bit Tiff. You can later make JPG copies, with sharpening for print and web as needed.

Mike

Does that mean my jpeg is no longer viewable to aunt Marie when she received it from uncle Joe who got it from grandpa whom was sent to by sis Mary Kay who copied from Ms. Giselle who stole it from cousin Leo whom i forwarded to in an email?
My grand kids or great grand kids (if i live that long) probably won't get to see the jpegs i take today. That's sad.

No, don't get confused. You can copy a jpeg from place to place as many times as you like. The degradation only happens when the jpeg is opened in an editing program (eg Photoshop) and resaved.

Simply copying from hard drive to CD, or email to hard drive, or whatever, does no damage to the file.

"No, don't get confused. You can copy a jpeg from place to place as many times as you like."

This is true.

"The degradation only happens when the jpeg is opened in an editing program (eg Photoshop) and resaved."

This is only true if you make changes to the image. PhotoShop will prompt if you want to re-place the original file.
If you do make changes, you can still keep the original un-changed if you save-as with a different name.

Try it, open a file from your CD, it will only let you "Save-As" onto the hard drive or writable disc.