Chuckwal Loc: Boynton Beach Florida

Linda
Know that don't mind just having fun in
my old age thanks as always for your help
chuck

traderjohn Loc: New York City

She has up to the minute dossiers on everyone.

Blair Shaw Jr Loc: Dunnellon,Florida

Dear Linda:

Thanks for helping me with the navigation around this site as I too have many questions about PP and I have never really understood it properly even when I did the on-line photo shop tutorials several years earlier. I got so frustrated that I quit using it and simply used the window's easy modifications that leave a lot of skills somewhere else. I will try to follow all the great suggestions that you and others have made to slowly get back on track but I 'm not getting any younger and seem to be goofy at times with all the specifics.

Thank you again for your kind & helpful manner.....it is very much appreciated.


Jimbo

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

No you can't "save" any images in Lightroom, there is no save feature. However, you can export your images to jpegs. I assume you knew that since you wrote "save" in quotes, but I wanted to clarify this for the OP.

bleirer

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that every time one opens and resaves a jpeg a little more data is lost due to compression. So jpeg is fine for your final save, but it is better to get the raw file into Lightroom as a DNG and export as a TIFF file which has no loss, then export as jpeg only if you need to save space. Regular email can handle up to 25 megabytes, so there is really no reason you have to use jpeg.

dsmeltz Loc: Philadelphia

You do not need to save as anything until you are ready to save a final image. LR saves your changes as a set of instructions to apply to the untouched original image. You can even use a JPEG as the original. As long as you do not export it (the JPEG) to the same file name, you will not destroy the original.

bleirer

So if I understand you correctly, the loss would only happen in the unlikely scenario that the pic was exported and then re-opened for editing as if it was a new file? For example sending someone a jpeg who then opens it in their own program for editing?

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

You can export from Lightroom, but it’s important to know that Lr does not change your original! It saves a list of changes and a proxy preview image with those changes applied.

When you export or print or send to a web gallery or produce a book or present a slide show, Lightroom applies your changes to make a copy for the stated purpose.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

DNG is always optional unless your version of Lr doesn’t read your (newer) camera’s raw files... Personally, I never use DNG.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

If you are importing a jpg into Lightroom, you can edit to your heart's content. When you go to export the file, Lightroom will complain if you try to overwrite the original file, preferring to export it with a different name (or to a different folder). It will allow you to export it as something other than jpg, or it will change the name enough that you can have both files at the same time and you can tell which is the edited one.

Personally, I would recommend using a different name. That will preserve the original jpg, and since that file was not rewritten, no re-compression is applied so no degradation. The new file is a fresh jpg. Since there was some effect of the compression on the imported file, there will be additional compression artifacts on the exported file. I would not view this as a problem since the artifacts are generally minimal unless you are using very high compression, or repeat the compression process many times.

But I would encourage you to shoot in raw.

When I started with my DSLR I shot jpg because it was what I knew. Eventually I took some shots with an unfortunate setting, and since they were non-repeatable shots I spent hours trying to correct the blue color cast resulting from incorrect white balance. I started shooting raw+jpg then. When my photopile exceeded 10,000 shots, I started having trouble finding things. I had been using LR, which made it easy to find things as long as I added keywords, but since I had jpgs from the camera there was a strong temptation to use the jpg directly so I didn't have to import it to LR unless it needed to be edited. With a large photopile, if it wasn't in LR, I couldn't find it. At that point I dropped the jpg output from the camera and used raw only. So I had to put it into LR to get a jpg I could use.

Shoot raw. You'll be glad you did.

dsmeltz Loc: Philadelphia

Are you replying to another comment? Please use "Quote Reply" so your question has context.

foathog Loc: Greensboro, NC

Are those stuffed animals??? My squirrels wouldn't stand for birds being so close.

SuperflyTNT Loc: Manassas VA

It’s still too chilly to shoot in the raw here. It’ll be another couple of months. Even then there’s always the danger of those “you’re gonna need a bigger lens” comments. 😜

foathog Loc: Greensboro, NC

Funny, I get it. lol sorry to hear about your "short" lens

SuperflyTNT Loc: Manassas VA

Well it is a wide angle. 😜