[OT] Basic Photo skills... Re-Saving JPEG's

[stephenpassmore at mac.com]

Hello RevDave,



> Also, I'm curious about how to best deal with a larger collection.  
> For my
> basic needs, I find that I have 2 basic classes of photographs -  the 
> good
> ones I want to display and then the others that are not as good - but 
> I do
> not want to throw out, and that like to keep as an archive somewhere.

Here's what I tend to do (if I'm being organised...).  I didn't see if 
you're using iPhoto, but if you are:

. import all the photos from the camera or card directly into iPhoto
. if there are any obvious duffers that I didn't previously delete on 
the camera, I get rid of them now
. once I have a reasonable number of photos (so that I don't waste CDs) 
I create sensibly named Albums and drag all the photos into the 
appropriate new Album
. burn all the Albums to CD
   - this has the advantage of not having to re-import the photos into 
iPhoto, they're already in its library structure (albeit on CD)
   - putting the CD into your drive will have it pop up in iPhoto
. delete those from the iPhoto Library on my hard drive that I don't 
think I'll ever use


>> Q: What is the best way to re-save save a JPEG after modifying the 
>> picture?

When I start editing photos (I mainly use Photoshop Elements), I never 
save them as JPEGs again (until I need them as JPEGs).  I tend to use 
either TIFF or Photoshop formats (mainly the latter).  JPEG is a lossy 
format (it likes to compress every time you save, loosing precious 
detail until you end up with something fit for nothing) and best 
avoided until you need to share the photo (webpage, email, etc).

Remember, iPhoto archives a copy of an imported photo; use the Revert 
to Original to, erm, revert to the original.

Hope this helps, Stephen