JPEG Qulity Differences.....

EhJsNe

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BEfore I get any spazzy answers to search it or memory is cheap.....I did search it...not super hard....but I did search...found 1 thread...and it didnt quite asnswer my question....and the issue with memory...Im 2000 miles from home right now...IN Arizona...and I dont thinks its fair to ask my grandpa to buy me stuff...after he bought me and my brothers the plane tickets to come out here......

So..on topic now:

Is a there a large difference in quality between JPG Fine, normal and basic? (I would take some test shots and put them on my granpas computor...but I seem to have misplaced my card reader....)
And PLEASE, do not tell me I should be shooting RAW.....I dont have the money for software that can edit RAW, nor do I have a computor capable of handeling RAW files or the program to edit them, Unless Im doing something wrong with GIMP, I can not edit RAW files.

I know that as you go from fine to basic the compression increases....and if affects large areas of the same color...such as skies, and Im shooting mostly landscapes out here...most of which, just like 9 out of 10 landscapes, have reletively large percentage of sky....(not trying to start anything about ken rockwell...I googles this jpeg issue...and his site came up...and according to him, basic is the same quality and fine...and thumbing through his galleries....the shots said to be taken on a digital camera seems, quality-wise, great!)

The reason I ask this, is because I can take just about double the pictures as I go from fine to basic....and If i can get more pictures without sacrificing a large decrease in qulaity, I would much rather do that....(And if the compression only REALLY affect large areas of the same color, I can always use the fun smudge tool to make pixelation kinda go away, at least in the sky, right?)

And if it helps at all.....most of them are going to DeviantART and Flickr, and only a few will be printed.....

This digital photography stuff has a lot to it......I want a roll of Superia and my Fm10 now.....its makes things so much easier.....all the PP is done by the photolab.....

Thanks in advance....and just so you know....it might be a day or two before I can get back on to check the replies............and again, thanks!
 
You're not doing anything wrong with GIMP, it does not have built in RAW capacity. You need UFRaw. It intigrates nicely with GIMP and does everything that, for example, CaptureNX does.

To the best of my knowledge, it doesn't change colors, just makes the image smaller.
 
I dont have the money for software that can edit RAW
Every camera that shoots RAW, comes with software to edit/process the files.
 
I dont have the money for software that can edit RAW
Every camera that shoots RAW, comes with software to edit/process the files.

:thumbup: For Nikon (OP's D70) download Nikon View NX. It is free and will allow you to edit exposure, white balance, contrast, etc.. Completely free and can be downloaded from Nikon's website as well.
 
For the few you would print, you're going to want the best quality JPEG possible. Don't use the "Basic" or really course compression for any of them. They'll introduce artifacting that only a program like Topaz DeJPEG can remove, and at worst actually resize the image to be smaller. >.<

As a rule, if you're shooting JPEG, try to keep shooting the largest size, finest/best compression. Otherwise you're losing quite a bit of quality.
 
Unfortunately, since you're posting on a public forum you'll have to suffer all 'spazzy answers' particualrly when they are earned.


As pointed out by others free RAW converters are a dime a dozen and readily avaliable on the Internet so it's very easy to believe you didn't search very hard as you state. One can only be lead to believe you didn't even bother with an Internet search since just typing JPEG returned 124,000,000 hits. Typing JPEG Basic returned 834,000.

Your D70 is 6 MP.... JPEG fine immediately throws away 2/3 of those 6 MP leaving you 2 MP of the original 6 MP. JPEG medium tosses another 1/3 leaving you with 1 MP of the original 6 MP, and JPEG basic tosses yet another 1/3 leaving you about 0.75 MP of the original 6 MP. That's worse than most camera phones.

Now, if you want to edit and use an editor like the GIMP, Photoshop and most others you destroy even more pixels.

None of that happens if you shoot RAW and use a RAW editor, until you're ready to output your image for the web or to have a print made.
 
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You're not doing anything wrong with GIMP, it does not have built in RAW capacity. You need UFRaw. It intigrates nicely with GIMP and does everything that, for example, CaptureNX does.

To the best of my knowledge, it doesn't change colors, just makes the image smaller.

Thank you very very very much! I will be sure to download that!

I dont have the money for software that can edit RAW
Every camera that shoots RAW, comes with software to edit/process the files.

I bought my D70 used, without the software............. *emberessed-ness*

Unfortunately, since you're posting on a public forum you'll have to suffer all 'spazzy answers' particualrly when they are earned.


As pointed out by others free RAW converters are a dime a dozen and readily avaliable on the Internet so it's very easy to believe you didn't search very hard as you state. One can only be lead to believe you didn't even bother with an Internet search since just typing JPEG returned 124,000,000 hits. Typing JPEG Basic returned 834,000.

Your D70 is 6 MP.... JPEG fine immediately throws away 2/3 of those 6 MP leaving you 2 MP of the original 6 MP. JPEG medium tosses another 1/3 leaving you with 1 MP of the original 6 MP, and JPEG basic tosses yet another 1/3 leaving you about 0.75 MP of the original 6 MP. That's worse than most camera phones.

Now, if you want to edit and use an editor like the GIMP, Photoshop and most others you destroy even more pixels.

None of that happens if you shoot RAW and use a RAW editor, until you're ready to output your image for the web or to have a print made.

I wasnt looking for a RAW converter....I was looking for the difference in quality of jpg, I didnt even look for RAW converters....picasa will convert RAW files for me!

I think you may have a messed up camera...or you are misinformed (no offense meant by that)...but anyway, changing the file quality shouldnt affect the pixel count...most camera have a sperate menue thing for the actual pixel count......just so you know...

Do you know howbadly the file is degraded by editing? I havent noticed a visible difference shooting in FINE from before editing and after....unless I set to compression something under 80.......

Well IM aware that I get better image quality from RAW....but my computor gets REALLY slow when I edit a raw picture in Picasa! I cant imagine what would happen in GIMP! My computor lags a lot in GIMP...and having a big file would make it worse...but if I really do get better IQ, I would rather shoot in RAW and lose some time...
 
I think you may have a messed up camera...or you are misinformed (no offense meant by that)...but anyway, changing the file quality shouldnt affect the pixel count...most camera have a sperate menue thing for the actual pixel count......just so you know...


Oh no he didn't!

:waiting:
 
You're not doing anything wrong with GIMP, it does not have built in RAW capacity. You need UFRaw. It intigrates nicely with GIMP and does everything that, for example, CaptureNX does.

To the best of my knowledge, it doesn't change colors, just makes the image smaller.

Thank you very very very much! I will be sure to download that!

Every camera that shoots RAW, comes with software to edit/process the files.

I bought my D70 used, without the software............. *emberessed-ness*

Unfortunately, since you're posting on a public forum you'll have to suffer all 'spazzy answers' particularly when they are earned.


As pointed out by others free RAW converters are a dime a dozen and readily avaliable on the Internet so it's very easy to believe you didn't search very hard as you state. One can only be lead to believe you didn't even bother with an Internet search since just typing JPEG returned 124,000,000 hits. Typing JPEG Basic returned 834,000.

Your D70 is 6 MP.... JPEG fine immediately throws away 2/3 of those 6 MP leaving you 2 MP of the original 6 MP. JPEG medium tosses another 1/3 leaving you with 1 MP of the original 6 MP, and JPEG basic tosses yet another 1/3 leaving you about 0.75 MP of the original 6 MP. That's worse than most camera phones.

Now, if you want to edit and use an editor like the GIMP, Photoshop and most others you destroy even more pixels.

None of that happens if you shoot RAW and use a RAW editor, until you're ready to output your image for the web or to have a print made.

I wasnt looking for a RAW converter....I was looking for the difference in quality of jpg, I didnt even look for RAW converters....picasa will convert RAW files for me!

I think you may have a messed up camera...or you are misinformed (no offense meant by that)...but anyway, changing the file quality shouldnt affect the pixel count...most camera have a sperate menue thing for the actual pixel count......just so you know...

Do you know howbadly the file is degraded by editing? I havent noticed a visible difference shooting in FINE from before editing and after....unless I set to compression something under 80.......

Well IM aware that I get better image quality from RAW....but my computor gets REALLY slow when I edit a raw picture in Picasa! I cant imagine what would happen in GIMP! My computor lags a lot in GIMP...and having a big file would make it worse...but if I really do get better IQ, I would rather shoot in RAW and lose some time...
What the hell, I tried. :lmao:

I'm sorry, but that's one of the best laughs I've had in about a week. I mean your reply. :lmao: :lmao: :lmao: :lmao: :lmao: :lmao:

Hey, you'll figure it all out one of these days. :salute:
 
I think you may have a messed up camera...or you are misinformed (no offense meant by that)...but anyway, changing the file quality shouldnt affect the pixel count...most camera have a sperate menue thing for the actual pixel count......just so you know...
The pixel count doesn't change when you change the JPEG image quality? Where did you hear that?

Looking at my XTi owner's manual I see that changing the JPEG image quality setting from High Quality to Medium Quality means a reduction of half the pixels (10mp to 5.3mp) and changing from Medium Quality to Low Quality means another reduction of half the pixels (5.3mp to 2.5mp). Looks like the pixel count goes down as image quality goes down if you ask me.
 
I think you may have a messed up camera...or you are misinformed (no offense meant by that)...but anyway, changing the file quality shouldnt affect the pixel count...most camera have a sperate menue thing for the actual pixel count......just so you know...
The pixel count doesn't change when you change the JPEG image quality? Where did you hear that?

Looking at my XTi owner's manual I see that changing the JPEG image quality setting from High Quality to Medium Quality means a reduction of half the pixels (10mp to 5.3mp) and changing from Medium Quality to Low Quality means another reduction of half the pixels (5.3mp to 2.5mp). Looks like the pixel count goes down as image quality goes down if you ask me.
Here is another good example EhJsNe. ^^^ Don't blow this one too.

Look at page 43 of your D70 Users Manual. The chart shows the pixel sizes of the 3 JPEG qualities.

You said you didn't get the software. You did get a copy of the D70 Users Manual, didn't you?

If not, I now have one I'll sell you.
 
Also, dude, Chinamen is not the prefered nomenclature...

Wait, wrong forum.

Also, dude, once you start shooting in raw, if you're anything like me, you will be amazed and wonder how you survived this long with out doing so. I pulled up some pics I took when I first got my camera (not knowing to use RAW) and my first though was "Oh, that's underexposed, well that's easy to fix... Oh wait."

Seriously. It is that big of a deal.
 

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