Discussion of Image Quality on the web. Why you should always save and work from the original image.

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GuidanceIMAGE QUALITY
Why Are You Asking for Original Images?
Every time an image is resized, compressed, or
saved in a different format, you lose a little bit of
the original image quality.
This can happen in many ways. If you make the
original image smaller, the editing program will
make its best estimate of which pixels to forget, and
which pixels to combine. If the image is enlarged,
the editing program will “extrapolate” its best guess
as to what the image should look like.
When you resave an image, you can lose quality two
different ways. JPG is a “lossy” image format. You
will ALWAYS lose some image information on the
save. PNG is considered a “lossless” format, but you
can still lose image information, if you change the
color space that records the image. Saving to a PDF
can also result in color changes and/or loss of reso-
lution. This is largely governed by how you
export/print your PDFs.
This loss of detail can happen every time the image
is changed and resaved. For old images that have
doubtful origins, they may have lost an immense
amount of the detail that existed in the original.
Don’t You Compress Images?
All the time, but we always begin our editing with
the best source file available. In a perfect world, this
would be the file created by the camera, or in the
case of non-digital original material, the first and
highest resolution scan available.
We save this original image as our source file for all
future editing. Admittedly, this takes up a lot of stor-
age space, but we think your project is worth it. This
allows us to have the highest possible quality in the
finished image, whatever size or usage it may be
ultimately destined for.
Simply Don’t Have an Original
If you don’t have the original image, we will do our
utmost to get the highest possible quality out of the
image you provide. We use various digital tools that
allow for enhancement and modification of lower
quality images.
In rare cases, we may recommend against the use of
an image because it will significantly reduce the
overall visual impact of your project.
Original 3870 px wide
Same area after image reduced to 1000 px wide
with “medium” JPG compression
320px wide section of original