Whew… at least you’ve still got your originals. The degradation you’ve been witnessing is from the constant re-saving of JPEG images. Each time you make a change, then re-save the image it has to be re-compressed. As JPEG uses a lossy compression scheme, even at highest quality, you wind up degrading the image a little further on each re-save.
So, what to do? Well, being as you are checking the images in IE6, and making adjustments back and forth, perhaps you haven’t calibrated your monitor, so that everything comes out consistantly. PSE2 is a Colour Managed piece of software and, apparently, (I’m a Mac guy) there is a utility that should have been installed with PSE2 called Adobe Gamma. Run this and calibrate your monitor, so that way any adjustments you make in PSE2 will wind up looking the same in IE6.
Then, you can use PSD or TIFF to save your intermediate images. Both of these are lossless. Once you’re happy with the image, use the Save for Web… option and that way your image only gets compressed once.
Hopefully, that will save you from having to bounce between PSE2 and IE6, and keep the image quality up where you want it.
If that doesn’t work for you, perhaps (I haven’t checked this out) another image type, such as PNG (Portable Network Graphic)(which I "think" uses lossless compression) may be more suitable.
G’luck!
Kyle
snoluvr,
You are killing your images with upsizing and downsizing in Save for Web repeatedly!!! Of course you notice serious image degradation.
snoluvr,
You are mistaken about needing to constantly resample to "view the true quality". The true quality is inherent in the original. When dittling with resizing for Web, one has to decide how much quality they will give up in return for faster loading time for viewers and a smaller amount of screen required to display the image. Because, this will always reduce the quality.
Better I think to decide exactly how much of your viewers monitor you want an image to occupy and change your pixel dimensions once. Do this in PSE and then view the image at 100% there. Add some shapening or whatever you need to do.
You didn’t say what setting you have for Edit>Color Settings. If you use "No Color Management", the image you see in PSE after resizing will be what the majority of internet surfers see.
Hey thank you Kyle,
When you say "constant re-saving", aren’t I basically nullifying any ‘saving’ by clicking "no" when prompted with "save changes?" when I proceed to X-out of each file?, doesn’t it just go back to the original jpeg file?
…or am I to understand that all the stretching around in "save for web" is of itself doing damage, even though I "cancel" the file out until I’m ready to save it.
I’m only using the "save for web" to get to see what the photo will look like on a web-page.
The degredation is not there in the final product, which I use for posting to a web page -then they look great (does this not mean there really is no degrade?)
The photos in question are ‘first timers’ in the PS schema and look bad..Ok I may have to try that gamma,
my moniter is a Mitsubishi/1024×728/32b color /navidiaG
Oh and aren’t TIFF files quite large? I thought the ideal lossless was psd?
Pretty late here and and this would take me some ‘goin-in’, Hah, you’ll probly hear from me again.. Thanks SO much
snoluvr
I like to keep a cd-rw in my drive when I’m working on a photo and save the psd file there so I don’t get those super big layered files on the hard drive. If I want to keep the working file after I’m done I can or I may only want to keep the result.
Hiya snolvr,
You’re right, if you’re not actually re-saving the file, then the damage has not been done. I misunderstood, I thought you were actually checking the images in IE6. (obviously my brain goes fuzzy at 01:00am EDT!!! 😉 ). So, yeah, if you’re tight on disk space, that’s one way of working around the problem.
TIFFs and PSDs aren’t actually much different in the space they take and they’re both much larger than a JPEG (at any quality). One advantage though, and that’s that both TIFFs and PSDs can be used to save layers, so if you’re in the middle of doing something wierd and wonderfull to an image and need to save it off to work on later, they’re the way to go. I’ve only got 7.9GB of images on the HDD and lots of elbow room, ’cause I save off to CD-R or DVD-R every once in a while. Or you can do like Bob L, in #5 above, and use a CD-RW as working media, but that can slow things down quite a bit, as CD-RW’s are way slower than a hard drive. And, unlike Bob, I’m a packrat, I have a tendancy to keep all sorts of intermediate files, so I have multiple copies of some images, in various formats.
I’m so used to opening a JPEG from my camera and doing an immediate Save as PSD, so I don’t bollix up the original, that these kinds of issues don’t appear until it’s time to send Mom some images. She’s on dial-up and gets rough copies in medium quality JPEGs, until I get around to mailing a CD-R of TIFFs.
Anyway, try the monitor calibration and/or, as Nancy S. says, turn colour management off and you should be seeing in PSE2 what you want the world to see on your web site.
Have fun!
Kyle
snoluvr,
Sorry, I rather jumped on you it sounded like in rereading my post. I too thought you were saving inbetween all the back and forth stuff! My misunderstanding. Pardon the large leap on my part.
Nancy
"When opening up a pic in PSE I’ve noticed the quality has degraded over the last several weeks, making it difficult to see the hot-spots for fixing-up..they have this real grainy, almost saturated greened-over look. "
But this is the part that was throwing them the curve, I think, because I would have misinterpreted the question, too. Normally what you’re describing is an indicator of repeated resaves in JPEG. So where are we with this part of the post?
wrote…
I’m only using the "save for web" to get to see what the photo will look
like on a web-page.
The degredation is not there in the final product, which I use for posting
to a web page -then they look great (does this not mean there really is no degrade?)
Are you opening the same .jpg each time? Is the .jpg the original file from your camera?
Ed
Hi All,
Thank you for giving this so much attention, I havn’t had time yet to go into the Gamma stuff since I have to learn the steps and what that entails..
Nancy, you sounded just fine to me 🙂 -no apologies needed, but I appreciate it..
Nancy you said; "….constantly resample to "view the true quality". The true quality is inherent in the original."
Thats my understanding also, that must be where some confusion lies with me, I thought that doing the following workflow was allowing me to send the original back unscathed; (which I’m thinking hasn’t to do with the degrade of the PS "look" though)
(No Color Management, havn’t gotten into that yet, or "layers" either)
my workflow: *Start up PShop
*bring up the jpeg file and click on a couple of
the auto-enhancements.
—In the "Save for Web" interface I then;
1-percent is reduced to 25%
2-change "Width" to 600 or 700 pix (just depends) 3-hit the IE6 and view the pic,
4-either press cancel or save,
5-if I save the file it goes into another folder
6-Once back in the PS interface (is that the right term?) I now wish to close out of that file, when I press the x it asks if I want to "save changes", I click "no" and off it goes, in its original "inherent" quality (or so I think)..
So it seems I need to be doing a "save as a copy" (psd or other?) for each photo?..before it gets a fix, its mostly just a one time thing for each one.
Ed said-
"Are you opening the same .jpg each time? Is the .jpg the original file from your camera?"
Yes, from the memory stick directly to the pc ("My Pictures")and from there the above..
Kyle said-
"TIFFs and PSDs aren’t actually much different in the space they take and they’re both much larger than a JPEG (at any quality)."
I thought I’d read that TIFFS are quite large compared to any other format (can’t get many pics on a mem card in TIFF mode), and PSD is smaller, lossless compression.
Question:
-should I be saving a copy in PSD or other, for every JPEG file?
I still have to investigate some of the suggestions here for my original inquiry, but appreciate the help for this filing stuff
Thanks guys! (blanket term)
snoluvr
Oh, Settings-custom/ JPEG /maximum /95 /Progressive
…if this is of interest.
Good Morning Sno!
Your workflow looks OK to me. You’re not over writing the original and saving the adjusted copy once, after twiddling, so you should be "good to go!".
On the file sizes, PSD isn’t compressed and can be a hair larger than a TIFF of the same image. However, (ready for some confusion?) the TIFF standard allows for LZW, ZIP or JPEG compression. LZW is proprietary and requires license fees so a lot of viewers can’t handle it, ZIP is relatively new to the standard so, once again, a lot of viewers (especially older versions) can’t handle it, and JPEG compression is lossy. Both LZW and ZIP compression schemes are no-loss, so you can save space, but not as much as using JPEG. (I’ve always figured if I’m going to use JPEG compression I may just as well use a JPEG file), but TIFF also allows for other info to be embedded in the file (i.e.: GeoTIFF) that’s not necessarily part of the image.
In your workflow, when you’d want to save as a PSD, is when you’re doing some additional work on the image. Like removing a telephone pole that’s "sprouting" from someone’s head, that sort of thing. Then you’d be using layers and stuff that the PSD will retain. Even then, once you’ve saved off the final image, you don’t need to keep the "intermediate" stuff.
Now, back to the original question. Re: the "grainy, almost-saturated greened over look". Time to check the entire process end-to-end.
Photographer: check for loose nuts and bolts, adjust beer/wine/whisky levels as required 😉
Camera: Lens clean, all menu settings where they should be, memory card re-formated by the camera
Computer: Monitor calibrated, hard-drive organized (yeah, right! 😉 )
PSE2: You may want to try re-setting the preferences (hit Ctrl-Alt-Shift immediately after starting PSE2 and before it actually opens [you gotta be quick]), colour management where you want it (full, Web, off)
Fingers: crossed
Kyle
Sno,
I’ve just had another thought. (and on only two cups of coffee!!!) Are you taking pictures outdoors in cold weather?
The reason I ask (there’s another thread on cold/cameras) is that if your camera is getting cold it may be affecting the sensor.
Just a thought.
Kyle
Hey Kyle-
Hah! (do i know you from somewhere?)
Just checkin in between chores, Thanks for the clarification on files! And the affirmation on my workflow makes me feel better (shining fingernails on shoulder) Dang..I’ve got alot to learn (sigh)
I havn’t even started "layers" yet, been too busy in other places..
Yeah I take pics on snomobile trips, camera hangs, tucked in under jacket/bibs to keep it warm. (Sony CybershotDSC-85)
I always delete pics through the camera, not the computer (not sure why thats best, just something I gleaned from sporadic study-habits)
I should probly just break down and take a class somewhere -yuk.
My monitor "calibrated"? It looks fine to me! Its just the PS interface that shows the degradation. Win. Picture n Fax Viewer and everything ‘else’ shows the pics off well. Color management is off.
I just run de-frag once a week or so, "organizing" my hard drive is something I’ll have to study up on..Yay! my son’s comming home soon so HE can help!
Like I said, its just a PSE deal so I’ll try that "end to end" thing on the PSE front..
Thanks again for the ideas 🙂
snoluvr
G’afternoon!
Ref the monitor "calibration". It’s a bit of a misnomer. When you run the Adobe Gamma tool, what happens is that it builds a file describing your monitor to colour managed software, so that software can adjust itself to display properly. It doesn’t actually do anything to your monitor, so nothing else is affected. Just so happens that, probably, the only colour managed software you’ve got is PSE2.
I’m not sure, but PSE2, even with colour management off, may still be using a default "generic" colour space file, which isn’t in line with your system. Somebody will some real knowledge will have to step in here. I’m like you, take the picture, save the picture, fix the picture, save a copy. If picture of niece/nephew, send copy to Mom.
Ottawa is getting 10cm of that "sno" stuff, yuck. (I wanna go motorcyling!!!! 🙁 ) So I imagine you’d be out sledding or sliding down mountains with boards on feet. We may not see the Maritimes for a couple of days – they really got some of that white stuff!
TTFN
Kyle
