This is how bad JPEG compression is: (imagesize warning)

[Garbz]

I've had a play with it before, and we even analysed the algorithm in one of our maths classes much to distaste of us students. It really is very good, but lacks support.

If browsers supported JPEG2000 there wouldn't be much of an issue. Much like the lack of support for colour profiles is holding me from uploading everything in AdobeRGB the algorithm is useless if it can't be viewed.

 

[Bifurcator]

Also I think you can mostly rest easy on Part D as I believe there's just about the same wide support for JPEG 2000 as there is for the old JPEG. And it's the only web displayable 16 bit format that works consistently (for me).

Lossy 16bit JPF (Jpeg2000) file compressed to 10% (AKA quality level 1 in the old Jpeg Standard).
The lossy wavelet compression in Jpeg2000 produces more natural looking artifacts.
This displays great for me. Can you see it?

Lossless version in 8bit JPF (Jpeg2000).
This displays great for me. Can you see it?
​

It would be interesting to see how many people could or couldn't see the two images above. Please chime in and say so if you can or can not see them.

 

[Overread]

I used opera, fire fox and IE7 and in all I could not see the photos at all - infact only IE7 detected them and showed the box and red X - the other 2 browsers did not show any signs of there being any photos present

 

[~Stella~]

I cannot see the images in post 17.

 

[Bifurcator]

Wow, sucks to be you guys...

Sorry about the smarty-pants remark. I thought it was kinda cute tho. Anyway, shown above here is what I see.

 

[Bifurcator]

Just tried it in Opera and FireFox and like you, they don't show up here either.

I wonder if there's a plug-in for browsers that can't see them?

 

[Cubase]

I cannot see any images with Firefox.

 

[Overread]

there might be a plug in - but as its not standard issue with the browsers its probably not finished or "official". As a result most (nearly all) people simply won't have them so to use JPEG2000 as a standarts posting format would not work.
Out of interest what are you surfing with?

 

[Bifurcator]

t
Out of interest what are you surfing with?

Safari - (Free for both Mac abd PeeCee). Until last week or so it was the only browser that supported color profiles. FireFox 3 recently released, now also claims to support them.


Oh well, I guess Part D is still a problem then.

 

[KD5NRH]

a) HDDs are cheap but ports on a RAID controller aren't. I would need 2 new HDDs and an Additional NAS box if I want to upgrade which is near $1000AU compared to a new $200AU HDD. At the moment I have more HDDs than computers to plug them into at the moment.
So my choice of file formats is space concious.

So set up cheap old PCs as fileservers for about $200 each. With nothing more than what's normally in them, you've got room for four IDE HDDs, or depending on the model, sometimes a lot more SCSI drives.

Organize well and you won't have to keep them all on all the time. Better still keep jpgs of everything, and TIFF/PNG of only the stuff you haven't archived yet on your working machine and archive lossless on the servers; then you'll only need to fire one up to move files to it, or to pull the archived ones when you need to edit something.

 

[mrodgers]

So, what I am gathering about this whole RAW vs. JPEG issue that we have on this forum is all about the quality loss when constantly resaving a JPEG file.

Now seriously, is there anyone here who constantly edits and resaves a JPEG file? Anyone?

I don't have TIFF or RAW saving capabilities with my camera. All of my photos are JPEG. Thus, the original file is saved once.

I then load it into my editor and edit. If I want to save the edits to maybe do something later on (for resizing my edits for web, then for prints later for example) I certainly am not saving a JPEG every time I edit. I'm not a moron and I doubt anyone who is on a photography forum is either and they would save it as a TIFF or other lossless format. I save any edited photos as TIFF along with the resized JPEG that I use for web, email, print or whatever.

Thus, I have the original JPEG, a TIFF copy with or without edits, and a 2nd saving of JPEG for a final usable image. The 2nd saving of JPEG may be many files as they may have been saved in different sizes or for different uses, but they are all 2nd saves coming from a TIFF file.

Is it all that difficult for everyone to understand? I very highly doubt folks here, on a photography forum, which is 99% digital thus all about editing and saving digital images, is resaving JPEGs 25, 50, 100 times.

 

[Mav]

The highest number of editing steps I ever have is 3 or 4. Usually it's just 1, and occasionally 2. After the 4th or 5th save on a JPEG at high quality if I zoom in at 600% magnification I can almost convince myself that I'm starting to see some JPEG artifacting. I agree with the conclusion that a JPEG after 1-2 saves will look every bit as good as the RAW. But if your editing is only going to involve that many saves in the first place (or 3 or 4) then there's still no reason to bother yourself with RAW. Or you can just dump your JPEG files straight to TIFF if you know you're going to do a lot of editing. Nobody in their right mind constantly re-saves JPEGs dozens of times.

 

[KD5NRH]

Nobody in their right mind constantly re-saves JPEGs dozens of times.

Not on a normal proof-pp-print process, but there are a few shots in my archive that I just keep thinking could be a lot better with just a *bit* more pp. Sometimes those can get 10-15 saves before I give up, and may get even more later if I start thinking that way again.

 

[Overread]

So, what I am gathering about this whole RAW vs. JPEG issue that we have on this forum is all about the quality loss when constantly resaving a JPEG file.

Nope this thread is not concened with the RAWvsJEPG war as you can't save a file as a RAW
What this thread is concerned with is the saving format of a photo after editing it - Tiff, JPEG2000 (on lossless setting) and photoshopes own save format vs JPEG which is lossy.
My own view is that I always save JPEG once I finsih editing, unless I am not totally happy with the edit - then its gets saved in photoshops own brand of file for later work. I also keep the original (either RAW or JPEG) unedited to go back to at a later date if I choose

 

[Garbz]

FireFox 3 recently released, now also claims to support them.
Oh well, I guess Part D is still a problem then.

Yes and much to my distaste Firefox disables colour management by default. I thought it was just going to be early betas but no. The gold release of 3 also disabled by default

So set up cheap old PCs as fileservers for about $200 each. With nothing more than what's normally in them, you've got room for four IDE HDDs, or depending on the model, sometimes a lot more SCSI drives.

One of the problems with revived threads is you get solutions to things which are no longer a problem. We setup a 1TB RAID1 fileserver ages ago. It just got another 1TB upgrade.


Ultimately though this thread was to show how bad JPEG compression is for final archival. There's no doubt that it should not be used for a working file. I wouldn't suggest anything other than a lossless 16bit format, TIFF or PSD being my format of choice. The key seller for JPEG in archival is ultimately it's universal acceptance. There are a myriad of fantastic formats which mean absolutely nothing if people can't view them, and I don't wish to convert every file I want to show someone else. I had this problem a few years ago when considering using PNG files for graphics on a website only to find out IE...4 or 5 (can't remember which) didn't support them.

God willing we'll all migrate to JPEG2000 soon, but given that it's already 2008....