When you export to JPEG, what quality settings do you use? I'm having a hard time deciding whether I want to use Quality 80 in NX Studio and end up with some of my 24MP images being over 10MB, or drop down to Quality 70 which seems to reduce the size by about 40%. It doesn't help that JPEG quality seems to have no bearing between programs, Quality 70 in NX Studio seems to be similar to Quality 90 in basic editing software like Pixelmator. Using the same settings for all my exports though, some pics just come out to tiny file sizes, which feels wrong for the image size in pixels. Take pic related, this is Quality 70.
And this is Quality 80. Can you tell the difference?
>>4517858I literally can't. I'm not even sure there is a difference.maybe it depends on the type of picture too but I don't know what can be more detail dense than fur and I can't see shit for differences in the fut even at very large pixel hunting zoom.it HAD to shave the bits somewhere, but I can't tell where.I mean there are some veeery subtle differences but the thing is I can't tell which one is better, just makes it look like different compression passes.
>>4517857it's easier to tell in an image with hard straight edges like distant buildings with sky behind.
>>4517858I notice only the tiniest bit difference super pixel peeping at 400% in a few small areas, certainly not 55% more information that the file sizes would suggest. The differences I did see were just differences, not any kind of quality change you see when you up from super low jpg compression (extreme macroblocking)
>>4517877That's fair, here's another one, not exactly a distant building but the closest thing I had available. This is Quality 70.
>>4517877>>4517904Whoops, Quality 80 for this is over 5MB. See here: https://files.catbox.moe/mtvpzo.JPG
>>4517907can't really do a fair comparison because the color difference is pretty huge
>>4517911oh shit, I think I was shooting with Adobe RGB when I took this, must be handled differently on 4chan vs catbox.Here is quality 70: https://files.catbox.moe/a3vyw0.JPGhere is quality 80: https://files.catbox.moe/exlpe6.JPGThey should both be in sRGB now, and I've put both on catbox to prevent any other weird issues.
>>4517913Not seeing anything worth the extra size. Probably need a bigger quality difference setting to notice anything.
>>4517913post a 100 for comparison
>>4517857The thing that decides quality is not pixel peeping, it's purpose. If you are printing, then you need the highest quality possible. If you are sharing them on social media or 4chan, you want to pick a quality that is below their threshold for downsampling/compressing, because their process will be lossier than yours. If you don't know yet what you're going to do with it, then it strictly depends on how much space you have. If you have terabytes left, save at highest quality. If you need to save space, you probably want to keep a shortlist of photos that are good and that you keep at highest quality, and the rest should be compressed to 70 or 80 quality.
>>4517936But if pixel peeping shows zero discernible difference, what would be the point of saving at a higher quality to begin with? Almost any print you'd make would have smaller details than blowing up the image on your monitor, so if that doesn't show a difference, why would a print?
>>4517857I follow old recommendations like this, always just export at 85 or 93.Resolution matters too, and you don't need to be exporting full res all the time. Even for client work, most of my stuff gets resized to 20mp for delivery.If you do high volume of work (or have storage costs like Pixieset), JPEGMini is a great option for reducing file size while retaining better quality.
For basically everything, I export @ JPEG92. There is basically no quality difference between this and 100. I have storage and an extra megabyte per photo is not going to somehow inundate me with issues. If 1MB of difference somehow concerns you then get a job.But, for online sharing you are often capped at certain MB or bandwidth limits, so I will go out of my way to recompress a photo for JPEG80. Lower is not needed unless you're really trying to fit as many files into 5MB as possible or something.I have detected artefacting in some photos with the red channel at JPEG85 before. Only a few times, but it's enough to have a higher standard.
>>4517950> if pixel peeping shows zero discernible difference, what would be the point of saving at a higher quality to begin with?Compression artifacts differ based on what image they are applied to. For example, applying jpeg compression to a very clean digital image will save a lot of space for no apparent quality loss, but on a film photo, the grainy areas will turn to mush pretty fast.My point is that pixel peeping is not an effective method of deciding what compression to use, unless you have infinite time and want to pixel peep every image before applying compression. Just apply a standard compression recommended for your purpose and you'll be fine.>Almost any print you'd make would have smaller details than blowing up the image on your monitor, so if that doesn't show a difference, why would a print?Correct, prints usually work well even at low quality. But there is cases where it won't: again, fine details may look mushy, dark areas blocky, etc. So it's better to be safe, especially if you have a modern computer with terabytes of storage that can hold more or less an infinite amount of jpeg image.For safest, I wouldn't go below 90. For good quality, I would go 80. For web and Instagram where pic quality is not important, I would go 70. Under that, artifacts will appear even at low magnification.
>>4517986I save my RAWs on hard drives at home, these files are to dump in my camera roll on my phone/iPad for showing people, sharing online, my own casual viewing. Those devices have limited storage. Saving to 90 or 100 quality is notably sharper but at huge file sizes, since I already have the RAW backed up I can always "reprint" from that at a super high quality if needed.Since JPEG quality numbers seem to vary by program, I've been using Irfanview to view the quality of JPEGs, it's got its own arbitrary scale but I can compare between programs now at least. Irfanview says that the Quality 80 from NX Studio is 90 JPEG quality, while Quality 70 is only dropped to 87 JPEG quality, but crucially it adds 2x2 chroma subsampling. I imagine coming off a bayer sensor in the first place the chroma subsampling has virtually zero impact, so that seems to explain the minimal difference in quality despite the huge file size difference. I have no idea how this compares to Lightroom's outputs as I don't use it. If someone wants to post some various outputs from Lightroom I can get the quality levels in Irfanview to have a point of comparison. My suspicion is that any "pro focused" image editor (Lightroom, NX Studio, etc.) has a JPEG scale curved to a higher quality than say, Paint.NET or Pixelmator.
>>4517913biggest difference I found is in the shingles - more grainy in higher quality, but it's very subtle. I can't see it at 100%. I think not worth the bigger file size.
how do you guys do context-aware compression? so that faces and important details get less compressed and blurry backgrounds more
>>4519074I don't worry about that
>>4517989ntaI got NX and Lightroom maybe I'll get around to making some jpegs but I just got my first camera the other days so finding a good pic is difficult. I think I usually just set the quality based on estimated file size anyway.also from my limited opinion is if you're doing it for business and print there has to be some standards cause different processes require different things.but if you're just a guy in the internet no one is going to give a damn about your pics to 200% into them and look at it for 10 minutes. people just gonna scroll in their phone and go "ooh that's nice" and then scroll 9001 times more on other pictures. so maybe it's better to be less autistic about it and have fun and concentrate on artistic expression which is not so reliant on fidelity unless it's just super shit (unless the super shit is your artistic vision).actually limitations is often what sparks creativity and doing more with less is a lot more interesting than doing less with more, unless it all wraps around on itself and becomes performative kitch (?) but then it can come around and become post ironic or genuine fun.all in all having fun and not giving a fuck feels like the way to go.definitely beats not sleeping nights trying to figure out if jpeg 81 is better then jpeg 79 or if having aa layer in your sensor for 1% sharper image at 200% is better or whatever else super technical autism that no one except you and the select few like minded autists.it's like audiophiles. you end up with a lot of knowledge and gear. you spend days months years researching which codec to convert your flacs to to be transparent or or if audio crystals improve audio but you don't listen to shit.and a guy with a 5$ chinese iem is just enjoying music.
>>4517857It is year of our lord 2026. Even with COVID + AI bubble pricing, a 1TB hard drive is still $130 or less. Stop being a fag and export lossless PNGs, then re-export as JPEG if and only if you hit a maximum file size limitation.If you actually run out of storage, the solution is to buy more storage.
>>4520295these are pet and building corner photographers, there's no reasoning with them
>>4520295Why export PNG's instead of 16 bit TIFF?
>>4520354Universal compatibility + HDR sucks ass. Presumably you're keeping the source files, since you should do that regardless, and if you're editing you should also keep the project file (XCF, PSD, etc), so you can always re-export in whatever format you need without losing any quality.For prints, yeah you probably want something better than PNG, although this depends on what you're printing with. Realistically speaking, you don't need a file with better quality than what your printer is capable of printing. I get my prints done professionally though so that's not my problem, can't advise beyond that.
>>4517857photos I like/taken for other people = keep the raw and everything else as a 100% quality, 100% res jpeg onlyBecause I am not retardedA 100% jpeg can survive a minor edit with no quality lossA 70% scaled down jpeg is cooked. No going back.
>>4520407may as well just store a compressed raw, it's not that much larger than a 100% jpeg.
>>4520407>Because I am not retardedNot so sure about that>>4520295This is also retarded
>>4521038Okay, what do YOU do with your images then? If you've got it all figured out, let's hear it.
Holy fucking shit it's not that deep guys.>Keep your RAWs on a DAS/NAS off your local system to preserve system storage>Edit and export as JPEG @92 Compression because that's like 8MB tops>Ten thousand JPEGs saved like this is only 8GB (and likely way less as files are not all going to be that big)If eighty (80) GB of data is too much for you to keep then this hobby is too expensive for you.If you want, export the RAWs as TIFFs after you do some basic edits because that's literally its purpose. Then you can make more drastic edits for later.
>>4517857if you save your raws, the only restriction is the deliverable. export to what your client expects. it really depends on what you shoot. a guy shooting for a sporting event might need to deploy fast, sooc to socials. someone making prints might need all the detail and data possible.
>>4521058Here is a 24MP photo exported at 92 quality, resulting in 18.3MB: https://files.catbox.moe/sro76o.JPGYou can't post this anywhere without it being re-compressed, every messaging app will reject or again compress it, this shit would barely fit in an email. And there are 1000 MB in a GB, not 10,000.
>>4521073no one on this board has clients, including (You)
>>4521073Best take. Just shoot and edit RAW, export as for your intended output(s) as needed. There's a reason process recipes are a thing for both C1 and LR. Also interesting that for all the talk of JPG compression, sure is not much on output sharpening.>>4521076>You can't post this anywhereIf it's worth seeing at that resolution, it should be done as a print, or for client delivery with a proper photo delivery method. Nobody should be going around emailing 24mp images. If you're also doing lots of full size delivery, you should consider standard industry tools like JPEGMini.
fuck this topic.you guys ever reduce the image size to reduce noise and increase sharpness?like, I have a 24mp cam and what the fuck do I ever need it at full size?
>>4521076>u cant post it on de socials reeeeReal cameras are for real lifeGet 300dpi art quality prints or use a pns
>>4521036Raws are non destructively edited and there’s 0 guarantee someone else or future you will have the correct software and profiles to display it the way it was originally meant to beIf you’re never going to make a major edit again or get autistic over smooth gradients in prints, just save a 100% quality jpeg in srgb and save the 5 megabitties so anyone who opens it will see the same image. You could also store tiffs instead of raws but maybe you’d want to completely redo the colors in the future/if you ever did print it or something
>>4521123I don't know I just have compressed raws and even my phone and windows images can view it and there's an embedded jpeg anyway.just configure your camera to give you good picture that you don't have to edit, in the embedded jpeg, and use manufacturers software to make a jpeg when need be with the same settings and colors cause they're in the raws metadata.>guarantee you will have the correct softwarewhere is it gonna disappear to? is there gonna be a huge solar flare? I don't think you'll care about photos in that case
>>4521085> Hire a photographer.> He sends you 1920x1080 50% compression jpegs because "lol why you need more are you a pixel peeper".> Don't pay him and block his number.
>tfw I got this printed as a 5x7 at a local print shop nearly 20 years ago from the SOOC jpg because I was a dumb teen who didn't know any better>tfw the original files are long gone>this and some other prints are all I have leftI still like this photo but god damn I wish I could go back in time and slap myself round the back of the head for not shooting raw and not maintaining backups
>>4517857dear anon different programs have different measuresprinted image you likely want 2x1 subsampling online image you likely want 2x2 subsamplingquality 80 nice compromiceimagemagick 90 is was subsampling treshold
>>4520354anon only gets into 16bit printing with xps inkjet driver?
>>4521105anon wanna have a go with globcover 2009 tiff with your pc wish you luck
>>4521105Yes, oversampling is real. Same as it is commonly done for video.>>4521144>just configure your camera to give you good picture that you don't have to editWhy do you think professionals shoot RAW + edit instead?
>>4521717because more control.also I never said not to shoot raw, I shoot raw.
>>4521123If the photo is actually valuable, your descendants will have more fun with the raw, trying to guess what the final result should be. Post-edit tiffs are boring.
