Which Is Better? PSD or JPG for Print Quality in InDesign

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
October 16, 2024
3 replies
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My colleague saves all his image files as psds or re-saves jpgs as psds for a magazine he designs in inDesign. Surely when inDesign exports to PDF, it compresses them to jpgs anyway? He said they print better if they're psds, any truth in that? It's taking up so much memory and an unnecessary task in my opnion - any truth in his theory?

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Correct answer Willi Adelberger

If you have a jpg leave it as a jpg. Resaving as psd cannot improve the image.

Willi Adelberger

Community Expert

Both are correct.
If you use transparency, layers or layer comps you need PSDs.
If you have text or vectors in the image, use PDF/PDP.

R

roisinb20985802Author

Participant

But you wouldn't take a jpg and save as a psd because ' it prints better as a psd'?

R

roisinb20985802Author

Participant

No, that's ridiculous, unless, as I said, there's going to be multiple edits. Eventually, with JPG, you will degrade the image.

So a jpg saved as a psd file will keep its quaility longer? There are some historic photos we use now and again so maybe this is his thinking?

BobLevine

Community Expert

There is nothing inherently wrong with JPG but I wouldn't bother saving a PSD as JPG just for the sake of doing it. If there's a PSD, I would place that and be done with it. Makes editing easier, too.

Shorter version: I doubt they print better unless the JPGs are overcompressed, but there's no reason to save a second file.

So I just re-read that and I had it backwards. Your colleague's workflow makes zero sense unless there's a lot of image editing going on.