Jagged lines when reducing size of a photo

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Re: Jagged lines when reducing size of a photo

Okay, long story here, so grab a cuppa if you want. I checked the camera and it's set at the highest resolution, as I'm sure it always has been. I think the problem with that picture was this: when I'm editing photos for the first time, I create a separate folder for the finished copies and leave the originals untouched. Once in a while, I accidentally overwrite the original with the edited copy, but I didn't worry about it since I thought I was saving them uncompressed. However, last night I discovered to my dismay that Paint Shop Pro was actually set to compress jpg's somewhat so I've been losing some quality. I corrected it right away, but any originals that I overwrote before are reduced in quality now. That's the only thing I can think that happened to the lake picture.

Another thing about file sizes, I just checked a new batch of photos I transferred to the computer and they range in size from 450 KB to 1.3 MB, all recorded at the highest resolution in the camera. The smaller files have large areas of similar colours/tones (lots of blue sky or white snow). The large-sized files have a lot of detail in them. Doesn't that have something to do with the file size? (The camera records photos as jpg's, there's no "raw" setting.)

As for jagged lines, I'll upload a few examples to my web page to see if others see the same thing.

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Re: Jagged lines when reducing size of a photo

These two photos aren't bad for lines at around 45 degrees, but when lines approach vertical or horizontal, they really become apparent, at lest on my computer.

[lumix]

Re: Jagged lines when reducing size of a photo

Okay, long story here, so grab a cuppa if you want. I checked the camera and it's set at the highest resolution, as I'm sure it always has been. I think the problem with that picture was this: when I'm editing photos for the first time, I create a separate folder for the finished copies and leave the originals untouched. Once in a while, I accidentally overwrite the original with the edited copy, but I didn't worry about it since I thought I was saving them uncompressed. However, last night I discovered to my dismay that Paint Shop Pro was actually set to compress jpg's somewhat so I've been losing some quality. I corrected it right away, but any originals that I overwrote before are reduced in quality now. That's the only thing I can think that happened to the lake picture.

Another thing about file sizes, I just checked a new batch of photos I transferred to the computer and they range in size from 450 KB to 1.3 MB, all recorded at the highest resolution in the camera. The smaller files have large areas of similar colours/tones (lots of blue sky or white snow). The large-sized files have a lot of detail in them. Doesn't that have something to do with the file size? (The camera records photos as jpg's, there's no "raw" setting.)

As for jagged lines, I'll upload a few examples to my web page to see if others see the same thing.

Content dose have a big effect on the file size so you are correct on that score. I always save a copy in tiff mode and then edit the copy. Select save as to get the option to chose file type. When I first started with digital I had the same problem till I found out that repeated saving in jpeg was reducing the quality. You can re-save in tiff mode without any loss so that's how I do it now. Once I'm happy with the edit I then make a final copy in jpeg resizing at the same time.

Re the jagged lines, yes they are very visible on my monitor.

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Re: Jagged lines when reducing size of a photo

Thanks lumix, editing in TIFF format makes sense. I'll give it a try.

I also just discovered that the photos I load into the computer can be decompressed so that the file size is larger than the downloaded original. That must be why Ian questioned the file size of the lake picture. I think that means I need to go back through all my photographs and redo them if I want the best quality. Ugh!

I'm glad you could see the jagged lines, and that it isn't just me.