DAMphyne wrote in post #9632901
Doug,
I'm having a hard time understanding your work flow, for want of a better term.
When the customer sends the original JPEG, you make changes and save it over the original they sent you? There is NO such thing as too little storage space, a JPEG copy takes very little space and space is like cheap to the point of almost costless.
I never edit the original JPEG, only a copy and saving an edited copy does not change the original.
JEPG's can be just as high resolution as any other file. If your customer refuses to provide you with the image you need, you need to review your contract.
I would say, if the client sends an original JPEG, make your adjustments and save the changes(copy),
after that all use of that image can be made off the same base image(the copy), without changing the original.
I doubt that you'll find a photographer who will provide a RAW image to any client, so getting JPEGs should not be a surprise.
David, I agree with what you're saying and the would be great in a perfect world. One of the problems is that clients are not artist or photographers and no matter how hard you try to explain to them about the quality of the photos they always have this mentality that if it looks good on the web on my monitor then it should look good in print.
Yes, I agree, JPEGs can be high resolution, but that's not commonly what you get. This goes back to what I said above. A perfect example: you doing a brochure for a hospital. In this brochure there's a section where there's a list of the doctors who work in pediatrics. They want a photo to go with each on these names. This is a client that you had for a while so some of the photos are on file. So you give them a list of the ones you don't have. This is were it goes bad. They're having a hell of a time trying to get Dr. Smith between rounds to get a photo shot. When they do, it's someone with a point and shoot and you get a photo 2x3 at 100dpi standing against a wall with a harsh shadow. Then they have the doctors who are on vacation so they can't get a photo, so they end up pulling a photo off of their website, no need to explain the trouble here. So back to Dr. Smith, you try to clean up this photo as much as you can to get a good print. Yes, you use the original because it's low res anyway and you hope you can get a better one in the future because they told you that they will get a good one when he has the time to sit for a photo shoot so just use that one for now. So you end up creating the brochure as best as you can with what you got. Couple of months later they want a mailer created for Dr. Smith. The photo has to be larger for this, so you ask for a new one, but of course still can't find the time. So use the one you already have and they mention that it looked fine on the brochure, use it. So here's where the re-editing comes in and the jpg starts to go downhill, let alone trying to make it larger without loosing quality.
Over the 24 years I've been doing this, it doesn't matter how the requirements for a job is worded or how much you try and educate the clients. It rarely ever works. I have no problem whatsoever working with jpgs as long as I get it at a high enough resolution. But it's very, very rare to get a photo large enough at 300dpi from a client. We did have this client dealing with sailboats. They paid a professional photographer (actually he's very well known, but for the life of me I can' remember his name), he sent us the files directly and they were RAW. Perfect!!!!
The other problem, is workload and amount of designers you have working. You can have one photo that was edited in the sense that a person was removed. That photo ends up being used quite a few times. Then that same photo gets edited a couple of different ways, so you end up with 3 or 4 versions. When you have a good size client list, times that with the amount of projects that are being done over years period, then designers leaving the firm, new ones coming in, vacationing, sick leave. I don't care how good of filing system you have, you will run into the problem where the designer used the wrong version of the photo on an ad.
You also will have pushing deadlines and you have 10 jobs on your plate that needs to get out now. You come up on a job that needs to be changed. I don't agree with it but you will always have that designer that will not spend the time to look up the original because they're running behind on their jobs and just edit the one on the job that ran before.
You will always deal with those clients where they want to new logo, you give them 5 options, they don't like them. They explain more exactly what they want, you give them 5 more, still they don't like them. They come in a couple of days later with a drawing that their 12 year old daughter drew and they want it to look more like that!!! Sorry, getting off the subject. Anyway's these are my thoughts
- maybe it's the archiving guy in me (I work in the optical storage business, and have Printing customers that archive ALL source files from every customer) - but you should get proper archiving for this sort of thing. It doesn't seem professional when you have to ask for something twice. 
