The JPEG myth

Jpegs are good but there are many misconceptions surrounding their use, in particular that they degrade quality. Jpeg acts on an image file like a book reviewer summarising a book to make it simpler and smaller. Done once and the full plot and characters will remain but carried out repeatedly will mean small details in the story are left out. Other ‘non-lossy’ formats, such as Photoshop .psd or TIFF .tif are the ones to use if you intend to work on an image over a number of sessions, but when you’re finished and ready to print, then save the final version once as a JPEG. The resulting file will be smaller and much quicker to burn to CD or send via the internet.