picture quality

[eddietee]

Do I lose any picture quality when I make another copy in my software program, and print the second copy after retouching?

Thank You

Eddietee

[Jim1957]

That depends on what format the image is in. If it is a jpg, then yes you will loose some quality. If it is a tiff or raw file, then no you won't.

[slipe]

If you are taking the images from the camera as JPG there is a slight quality loss in the camera compressing it to JPG. You don't lose any more opening it in your image editor and don't lose any quality in the "save as" if you save in a loseless format like TIFF. You only take a second compression hit if you save as JPG.

[gibsonpd3620]

I always download my files to an archive folder. Create a second folder to transfer any files I may want to edit.

[ir]

I'm not sure I see a clear answer here, so I'll throw in my 2 cents worth. As stated, JPG files use a lossy compression compared to RAW or TIFF. However, you can make as many copies as you want using the operating system copy function without further loss of quality. If yougo into Windows Explorer, for instance, and copy files from one folder to another, an exact copy of the file is made. It doesn't matter what format the pic is in, the files are identical and no picture quality is lost.

As for doing touchups, that gets more complicated. I usually save intermediate files (half way through the touchup process) in Photoshop native format, then save the final result as a high quality JPG. I don't think there's a great loss of quality, if any at all, from one high quality JPG save of an altered image.

ir