philo Loc: philo, ca

i tried saving as psd files and I wasn't able to open my file. so now I save in high jpeg unless i'm going to post it then i reduce them to low jpeg.

rehess Loc: South Bend, Indiana, USA

IPhone cameras are incredibly capable these days. Unless you want to use long lens or do something "exotic" in PP, just iPhone images should leave you lots of opportunities - but I understand your pain .... I was born in 1947, and my dad gave me my first camera 8 years later.

dcampbell52 Loc: Clearwater Fl

Newspapers, magazines and other "news" publishers want their photographers to submit jpg because it requires little or no editing and everyone has it. Also because, typically, jpg is significantly smaller than Tiff, and other formats. Personally, when I shoot for publication, I shoot RAW + Jpg so that I have both. Also, news media wants jpg so that they can (supposedly) tell the world that their photos are unretouched and unedited. These days, many are using cell phones, not because of quality but because it's good enough and everyone has one. When I shoot for publication, I submit the jpg to the publisher and keep the raw for myself. The raw image (after processing) is almost always superior to the jpg, but once the jpg is reduced to dots (much larger than pixels) for offset printing and publication and also for putting on webpages, the quality of the photo is not as important as the content.

Tomfl101 Loc: Mount Airy, MD

When you repeatedly save a jpeg you are repeatedly compressing an already compressed file, thus degrading quality. A TIFF or PSD file is a "lossless" format that simply adds more data when you make changes and save. As far as printing jpegs vs tiff however, I have never seen a difference. I have sent both formats to labs (even extremely large prints) and concluded the tiff files are no better in quality than jpegs. Shoot raw, edit as needed as PSD or tiff, save as jpeg. That is my workflow.

Spirit Vision Photography Loc: Behind a Camera.

Myself and my lab prints from Tiff’s

camerapapi Loc: Miami, Fl.

"JPEG degrades every time it is opened and TIFF does not (unless you have edited more). "

That is not an accurate statement. You can open a JPEG file several times or forever, assuming you are not working on it, without suffering any degradation. Even if you work on it degradation of the image does not come that easily. What I have noticed is that after several manipulations some sharpness needs to be added to the file.
I do save my JPEG images to TIFF if I plan to work more on it in the future otherwise I save as a JPEG. Working on a copy does not degrade the original image.

davyboy Loc: Anoka Mn.

AMEN !!!!

John_F Loc: Minneapolis, MN

The degree to which a JPEG degrades depends, in part, on which version of the jpeg engine is used by your image editing software. Just opening a jpeg in a viewer does not rewrite the file. The early jpeg algorithm was lossy and subsequent revisions have reduced the degree of lossy. The engine uses the Discreet Cosine Transform, which is a part of the Fourier Transform. I gather the jpeg algorithm seeks to replace the bit map with a set of cosine curves and to my way of thinking can not be 100% precise. A camera sensor root data is just a very long string of '0's and '1's which is organised into a form that depicts the image. Any amount of compression in any sort of way can not be perfect. My Sony a6300 produces raw file of a 6000 by 4000 pixel image that occupies 24.9 megabytes of computer storage space. So the pixel depth can not exceed 1 byte or 8 bits. Was there compression - you betcha ya boots yes.

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

First off, your premise is incorrect. jpg files do not change when opened and closed. jpg files are changed when they are saved, whether edited or not.
--Bob

leftj Loc: Texas

I would be very skeptical of anything a university professor told me.

twillsol Loc: St. Louis, MO

[quote=jeweler53]

Right! And the only thing that degrades a jpg file is when you edit it and then save it. But it will take a lot of edits and saving many times before it is noticeable at all.

Besides, shoot Raw and you do not have to worry about it.

Joe Blow

Why JPG over TIFF? Why a family sedan over a bus or an Indy race car?

JPG is very versatile and will do a lot of things very well.

leftj Loc: Texas

Shooting 100% RAW is just silly.

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

For me, there are only 3 reasons to shoot a jpg

To produce a test image looking for sensor spots
To produce an image I need immediately (within 1 minute)(basically the same as #1 above)
To produce an image using a mode for which my camera will not produce a raw file (e.g. Nikon Live View continuous shooting).
Other than that I shoot raw only. Dropped the jpg from raw+jpg when I started to use LR. Shooting raw only forces me to put the images into LR and LR encourages me to add keywords on import. That ensures that ALL my images are in the LR catalog and have keywords.

jeep_daddy Loc: Prescott AZ

JPEG degrades every time it is opened and TIFF does not.
First, this is not true. Opening a jpeg doesn't do anything to it. Every time you do a save-as it compresses it again and again. Nothing happens to a jpg just by opening it.

When you edit a raw file you always keep that raw file. It's like a negative. So if and when you finish editing the picture that started with that raw image, saving it as a jpeg is only really done when you need the file to be small for reasons such as emailing it, posting it on the web or social media, putting it on a thumb drive to take to a lab for printing etc. There may be some more reasons but I'm not going to try and list all of them.

The point is, you still have the raw image and you can go back and work on it again and again and it's not going to lose anything to go back and re-edit. If you edit your raw image in an editor such as Lightroom Classic, or ACR (Adobe Camera Raw) and then take it into Photoshop for further pixel editing such as layering, you should still save the edited image in Photoshops own format such at psp or in the standard format such as tiff so as to keep your work so that at a later date you can go back and make changes should it become necessary. But from that layered image, you can still save it as a jpeg for the small file size as stated above for the same reasons as stated above.