CocoaRoger Loc: Cocoa Florida

If that's an issue, once you have the images downloaded into a folder duplicate the entire folder and never bother the originals only edit the duplicates. Or if they are that important put them on disk as a permanent backup.

commodore-don Loc: Cleveland, OH

Some years ago I learned that opening a JPEG to edit and then saving it, opening, editing and re-saving, etc. very quickly degrades a digital photo. Opening and closing a photo to view it does not degrade it.

In my opinion, TIFF's and raw images tale up way too much space. I never overwrite a jpeg, I just create other versions of it. For example, let's say that the original is DSC_0195.jpg. When I edit it in PS I would save it as DSC_0195F.jpg . If I want a lower-resolution version, I would again open DSC_0195, edit it and do a "save for the web" version named DSC_0195S.jpg . Most pictures only have two version, the original plus the F version. But I also have some photos which have more than four versions. Three or four jpegs take up no more space than 1 TIFF or RAW. Plus I always have the original photo, unaltered and un-edited to fall back on for other uses. That is because I NEVER re-saved it as a JPEG, just closed it. I even have other names, such as DSC_0195-8-5X11@600PPI.jpg, etc. or DSC_0195 6X4@96PPI.jpg. This way, even the edited ones are only second generations taken directly from the originals.

Brucej67 Loc: Cary, NC

I believe the loss your experiencing on the JPEG is based on the compression formula used for saving JPEG. So if you don't save it again when it is transferred from camera to computer you should never have another loss. Put the JPEG through an editor and save it and something could be lost, keep doing it and more could be lost. I am talking from 43 years of computer experience.

Gidgette Loc: Boerne,Texas

The way I understand it, if you edit a picture, save as same name plus 1 or 2 or a or b etc. That way the original will always be there. Is this correct?

CocoaRoger Loc: Cocoa Florida

You are correct AVarley.

BuckeyeTom73 Loc: Chicago area

Correct, because you are not over writing the original file; you are creating a whole new file. To get the best possible quality, save it with quality = maximum (which is different on different editors). To make more changes, after editting do a save as with another new name or suffix.

CocoaRoger Loc: Cocoa Florida

As I said, when you first download a group of pictures into respective folders, duplicate the original folder first. Then if you want to edit, just edit the duplicates and don't touch the originals when it comes to editing... No matter what you do to the duplicates, you will always have the original file to duplicate again if you need to start over. If they're ''keepers'', then put them on disk immediately before anything else.

wireman8 Loc: Toledo, Ohio

This is why I love this site, so much free, good information just for the reading.

marcomarks Loc: Ft. Myers, FL

Only opening and re-saving a JPG file hurts it. If you just drag it from one place to another during file management, the file is not opened by editing software and it is not affected.

JPG is a compression and expansion method so when you compress a photo into JPG format there is a little loss and degradation. When you open then re-save the JPG it is re-compressed and there is another loss and degradation. Each time the photo file is re-compressed a little more loss and degradation that happens.

By the way, if you are shooting in RAW, make sure you save your edited photos in something other than JPG, such as TIFF, then you won't have degradation and loss when you go back to them because there was no compression that took place.