[at-l] Good Advice for Digital Camera Newbees

[jbullar1 at twcny.rr.com (Jim Bullard)]

At 04:54 PM 1/20/2005 -0500, Walt Daniels wrote:
> > Multiple editing of the same file will mangle your image.
> >
>Mangle isn't quite the right word. It mostly reduces the resolution rather
>than scrambling the file or worse. This is because most images are saved in
>JPEG format and that is a lossy format so each time it is saved the image is
>degraded.

Actually I was thinking of more than the loss resulting from JPEG 
compression. While it is true that JPEG is lossy, even when you save to 
TIFF if you do one set of edits and overwrite the original file then decide 
later to re-edit it there are problems in doing that because some editing 
processes need to be done before or after others. I.E. sharpening should 
generally be the last thing you do. If you edit a file and save over the 
original then realize "Opps, I should have done (fill in whatever)" and 
attempt to correct the image you are now correcting the corrected image. I 
know people who have wound up with a totally ruined image because of 2-3 or 
even 4 sessions of correcting the same file. You can do that in word 
processing. You can't with images. If I determine that I should have done 
something different, I have my original file and I start over from scratch 
with the editing.