Saving pictures/files

[stokecity_m]

What's the best way to save a picture so it doesn't lose any image quality?

Say for uploading to places like Alamy etc.

 

[arclight]

As a TIFF, but the files are very large.
High quality JPEG is fine as long as you don't continually re-save it.
Don't know how often you'd need to re-save for deterioration to show.

 

[Scarecrow]

I usually shoot in RAW, and do my initial proceesing of the RAW file in something like ACR. For a few extra tweaks I import the file in to PS as a 16bit Tiff to be worked on. Once I am happy with that image, the Tiff can be saved in the event that I feel the need to come back to it.

I treat the RAW as I would an unprocessed film negative, and the Tiff as a processed negative. From the Tiff I will resize and save JPEGs for uploading to the web or other uses where a smaller file is required, and where a JPEG is of adequate quality.

What I don't do is save a file as a JPEG if I feel it's possible I may need to come back to it to do any rework, as the more times you save a JPEG so the quality will slowly be degraded.

 

[trencheel303]

Most imaging programs will allow you to choose the quality (compression rate - the amount of data that is thrown away) when you save a JPEG, and I always go for 100% quality. That way the program will try to throw as little data away as possible so for the first two or three edits any detail loss will be negligible.

I use a rule of two for JPEGs - never edit a JPEG more than twice. When processing my photos I do it in three stages. RAW -> JPEG -> resized and bordered JPEG- so really I would call that one and a half edits as resizing a JPEG (to roughly 640x480 from godknows how large) would cover up any slight loss in initial quality anyway. I would save the RAWs to TIFF but I tried that last night and each TIFF was absolutely enormous - nearly 70 megs.

So, in conclusion... i'd advise you to save to JPEG at 100% quality.

 

[stokecity_m]

cheers guys.