[LenH55]

Hello,
I have several thousand b&w negatives to digitalize, I am now partway through. My k5iis is set for monochrome and best quality jpeg. I have PS cs4 for post-processing and all of the pictures do need it if for no other reason than converting to positive.

Here are some of my questions. If I save a picture in jpeg AFTER editing will it be compressed again? If so is there a way around this by saving the image in another file format?
It is important that the file format is compatible with standard, native (ei. windows) photo viewers as the images will be sent to others on thumb drives. Obviously the file sizes should be as small as practicable.

Would copying these images in raw and ultimately, after editing, saving them in jpeg be a better route? Does anyone have a roadmap for that?

Any thoughts that you may have on the above will be greatly appreciated.

Len
.

[Ivan]

Of course they will answer that you need to shoot raw, I think so.) And after processing, compress in jpg.Processing will be more flexible.But it will not be fast ...

[pschlute]

Hello,
I have several thousand b&w negatives to digitalize, I am now partway through. My k5iis is set for monochrome and best quality jpeg. I have PS cs4 for post-processing and all of the pictures do need it if for no other reason than converting to positive.

Here are some of my questions. If I save a picture in jpeg AFTER editing will it be compressed again? If so is there a way around this by saving the image in another file format?
It is important that the file format is compatible with standard, native (ei. windows) photo viewers as the images will be sent to others on thumb drives. Obviously the file sizes should be as small as practicable.

Would copying these images in raw and ultimately, after editing, saving them in jpeg be a better route? Does anyone have a roadmap for that?

Any thoughts that you may have on the above will be greatly appreciated.

Len
.

Every time you save a jpeg you lose detail. Will you notice ? I very much doubt it. You say you want to send the files as small as possible...that will lose more data than saving a full size jpeg a number of times.

Use jpeg in camera. I suggest not using b+w in camera. Do a few test shots and see if you like the end product.

If it is not giving you the contrast or tonal range you want then try raw, but this will be a much longer process. How are your raw processing skills ?

[UncleVanya]

There are batch raw processors also to consider.

I personally would shoot in raw+ with your intended size jpg. If no edit is needed stick with the camera created file. If an edit is needed use raw. Or shoot all in raw and batch process in lumps with similar settings.

This is a mountain of work.

[Kobayashi.K]

Some editors, like Paint Shop Pro, can save JPEG's as lossless (no compression) [1]. So you can start with a JPEG from the camera and during post-processing you can save as many intermediate files in JPEG as you want without loosing details. For publication you can save the final photo with a compression factor set to it.

[1] File Save As | Button Options | select Encoding type = Lossless | Save

---------- Post added 01-28-20 at 06:25 PM ----------

Of course for maximum quality you should copy the photo to RAW (and save as TIFF). But if you are only showing the photo's on a monitor JPEG is a more convenient format, because an average monitor and a JPEG both have about 8 stops dynamic range.

A strategy could be to shoot RAW+ (RAW + JPEG max quality). The RAW is only saved to disk for possible future use, the JPEG is inverted to a positive for direct use, showing it to other people and on a monitor.