quality deteriorates when saving

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
November 8, 2021
2 replies
1173 views

I drew art and wanted to save it in JPEG format. Everything has been saved, but the picture quality has deteriorated a lot.

Actions and scripting

This topic has been closed for replies.

PECourtejoie

Community Expert

Hello, JPEG is a lossy format, that means that compression deteriorates the data. It is recommended to use native formats, like PSD or TIFF to store your master files, and export jpeg to different sizes needed with the lowest amount of compression possible according to the file size you need for online, or sharing purposes.

See the effects of JPEG compression: https://www.photoshopessentials.com/essentials/jpeg-compression/

D Fosse

Community Expert

Two things:

One, it's just pixels. Don't reduce pixel dimensions too much.

Two, jpeg is a lossy and destructive format. Any jpeg compression degrades the image somewhat, even at "maximum" quality. The compression is irreversible and cumulative, and every resave dgrades the image further. Don't use jpeg if you want full quality, use TIFF or PSD.

Kukurykus

Legend

Once someone wanted to check the loss of jpeg files quality with every save. I couldn't make it real. Of course I heard many times it's like that but I never could reproduce it. Would you be able to show some example, or just share a method for it? The only that worked was rotating the image before of each next save, but that's not the same: Jpeg Generation Loss Script / and the lacking video.

D Fosse

Community Expert

It's not a question of "how much" or whether you can see it or not in any given image. The point is that it happens, it can't not happen. It's how the jpeg algorithm works - there's no way to get exactly the same pixels out as you put in.

We've all seen the posts where users save to jpeg and can no longer get the numbers to match. No matter what they do, even at quality 12, the numbers just won't match. That's jpeg compression.

We're all perfectly fine with this. We all agree that for most practical purposes, it doesn't matter much and jpeg is just fine. The size reduction is more important. That's why we still use it.

But if it's important that nothing in the file changes, then you use TIFF or PSD, not jpeg.

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded