Best way to edit and maintain quality?

[NickN]

I use Adobe CS3 to edit my photos. I shoot in JPEG rather than RAW as it allows more flexibility with the Camera, such as saving faster, and helps when shooting continuously (RAW is obvously wayyyyyyyy too slow due to large file size).

I have the camera set to maximum JPEG quality, and also I save all my JPEGs at Max quality (12) in Adobe. What else can be done to ensure the quality of the photos is kept as high as possible through the editing and saving process?

Nick

[pilotgolfer]

I'm not sure what else except to only save once. That's all I know of, others might know another tidbit or two.

[Billsville]

Edit the camera JPEG and save to JPEG once.

If you must save in the middle of the procedure, use TGA or TIFF which are non-destructive formats.

[NickN]

Excellent, I recently learned about the "save once" rule and now do all my editing then save right at the end.

I also got a free copy of Adobe Lightroom 1.4 which is excellent for purely editing photos. I am more comfortable with CS3 however.

[QuebecAir]

Processing

Hi NickR

Since you are using CS3 you have a new tool in CS3 for processing photos.

Open Adobe Bridge and right click on any jpeg photo and select "Open in Camera Raw" you will then be able to edit as in RAW and save it back to JPEG or whatever.

[KLM772ER]

Open Adobe Bridge and right click on any jpeg photo and select "Open in Camera Raw" you will then be able to edit as in RAW and save it back to JPEG or whatever.

You can do that, but you won`t actually edit the shot as RAW.. Everything you can do to the shot is the same you could do in Photoshop, it is simply another application that edits the jpeg than...

Shooting RAW saves the informations the sensor in the camera gets. Open those information later with a RAW converter (like Camera RAW from adobe) gives you the possibility to edit the shot right out of those Information which contain much more details than the JPEG of the shot.

If you shoot in JPEG mode, the camera simply does the the steps you would later do in a RAW converter for you,with the settings you entered (like WB sharpening, satuartion etc.) and than saves the informations as a JPEG...
So editing a JPEG with a RAW converter has no advantage, as the file does not contain the information you would need to for it..

Hope this helps
CHeers
Björn

[QuebecAir]

Sorry for the misunderstanding when using "as RAW".
What was meant was that you could edit the photo the same way you edit a RAW photograph (exposure, temperature etc). Of course a jpeg is already edited by the camera while a RAW well it is untouched.