Do Not Edit Your Digital Images in a JPEG Format

If you shoot you digital images in a JPEG format, take the time to do a file conversion before you start to edit the image. Do a "Save As" to a Tiff format or a PSD format. Either format is fine.

Once you saved your file to a TIFF or a PSD you can "SAVE" your file as many times as you like with out degrading the quality of the digital image.

JPEG format is a compressed format. It only records the information it needs and throws away the information it doesn’t need. That is why JPEG files a re a fiction of the size of TIFF or PSD files.

If you edit you images in a JPEG format and continue to save the image over and over again in a JPEG format, you will severely degrading the image.

After a while you will start to see the break up in the image. You really won’t see it on your computer monitor, but you will see it when you go to make prints.

I cannot stress enough that the original JPEG or Tiff digital capture is your digital negative. Just like a film negative you want to preserve that piece of information for future use.

Your workflow should always be that you burn a copy of your original digital images to a CD or DVD and get them in a safe place.

If you do this, you will always have the untouched file to work with. I cannot tell you how many people start to work in the original JPEG image, size it for a web shot and then do a "SAVE" and not a "SAVE AS"

If they erased the card, they have lost the original digital file. That would be the same as throwing your negatives in the garbage.