Quote:
The only people who think jpeg isn't good enough are the armchair photo nerds […]
Plus the photography and prepress professionals who don’t confuse “good quality” with “good enough”. You see, my learned profession is photographer; I have been earning my money with photography, graphic design, typography and prepress production work since 1972. JPEG file format only is used in the last step of preparing a publication, as soon as the final image dimensions, the quality of the printing paper and the required image output resolution are known.
There’s a well-known formula used to calculate the required image output resolution:
LPI (lines per inch) ×
quality factor (should be between 1.5 and 2) =
DPI (dots per inch) required to print the image at 100 percent (final print size)
The original image, usually stored in RAW or Photoshop native format, is resized/resampled according to the parameters given in the formula above, saved
once as JPEG and placed in the publication. Depening on the quality factor (see the formula) there’s a certain scope within this JPEG may be enlarged, in case this should be required. By
enlarging a pixel based digital image, the image resolution is
decreased, causing the image to appear fuzzy and pixelated, since the required relation of two pixels for each single halftone screen dot isn’t kept intact. Also the JPEG artifacts, existing in any JPEG image, become clearly visible in the enlarged version of the image. (What I stated is not valid for vector based images, but that’s not what is being discussed here.)
That’s the reason why photographers and prepress professionals always keep the original image in an
uncompressed file format and export as JPEG according to the requirements of the output device used within the work-flow of a publication’s production.
The “good enough" attitude you seem to personify is widespread in the print, audio and video production business and responsible for the steady demise in media production, which can be well observed at least through the last twenty years. Suddenly, everybody who is able to operate layout software, image editing, audio recording and video production software considers himself an expert in this area. The horrific results of this overestimation can be seen and heard daily.
Werner.