New and have a question about saving pictures

[TeaTrekkie]

I am just now getting into using Photoshop even though it's been on my computer for a couple years. It has always intimidated me some. I recently took some graduation pictures of my daughter and since Paint.net isn't the greatest for taking out facial spots (i.e. zits), then I decided to give PS a try. It works great, but I am sorta stuck with knowing how to save pictures.

I took PS's cue and saved the edited version in their format. They scared me about jpeg losing pixels after saving a couple times. The thing is now I want to send the edited pictures to my daughter for approval and I don't know how to do that with PS's format. Maybe it's time to switch them over to jpeg or is there another format to use? Maybe I should make a copy first to still keep the picture safe or are copies always made automatically? I'm just a little unclear about all this.

Thanks for any help!

 

[MrToM]

Always save your work as a PSD file....regardless of its final intended use.
A PSD file will preserve all your layers, if you have any, meaning that should you need to continue editing you can do so 'non-destructively'.

Jpeg is notorious for introducing artefacts, especially with anything red. Opening a jpeg file and saving it again as a jpeg will decrease its quality...regardless of any 'quality' setting you may find......its just the nature of jpegs. If you 'create' an image from scratch it's quality starts as the best and saving from PS as a jpeg is not going to hurt but, as you are starting with a jpeg image its quality has already been compromised, its already been compressed once in the camera, so its best not to save it as a jpeg again.

You can get round this if your camera has 'raw' image format, its uncompressed so is the best quality out of the camera but its not something you can turn on for images already taken....you have to 'Shoot in RAW' as the phrase goes. Photoshop has 'Camera raw' for editing .raw images if you want to experiment with that at a later date.

Having said all that, don't get me wrong on jpegs. Its a good sturdy format with good compression rates....but its really best to only use it once and since that 'once' is when it's saved in the camera then that's about it for using jpeg any further.

So, from the PSD you can save out to many different formats, and which one you choose depends on what you ultimately want to do with the image.

If you just want to send an image for someone to confirm the composition of an image, quality is not that important.....so a jpeg in this case would be good enough....a kind of 'draft'...it'll do.

If you wanted to upload that to a web page or gallery then again, quality isn't that important so again jpeg could be good enough.

If on the other hand you need a better quality image for a more rigorous inspection then you need to use a better format.
Most other formats are pretty good on quality so the decision really comes down to file-size, (compression), and/or transparency.

PNGS, GIFS and TIFFS are the most common formats, all support transparency although with GIF transparency is very much an on or off affair. TIFFS require an alpha channel for transparency and are generally used for importing to other applications or where a higher degree of additional information is required.

PNG is used more or less extensively in web pages and applications due to its excellent quality, good compression and its support for variable transparency.....a good all-rounder.

If I were to send anything for 'Approval' id use 'Save As...' and the PNG-24 format.
It can also be opened in virtually any image viewer and also directly in Firefox if needs be.

Hope that helps more than confuses but in general, stick with PNG and you won't go far wrong.

Regards.
MrTom.

 

[TeaTrekkie]

That does help! And thanks for the detailed explanation. So, my only question that remains (for now) is about the original saved picture. If I do PNG as my next step, does that make the original PS format go away? Or is that saved as a copy? Or do I even need to worry about that?

 

[ibclare]

Once you save your psd, just use the file>save as to choose a format -- just in case that was losing you in the process. MrTom gives a great run down for you!

 

[MrToM]

No worries.

As to PSD's.....Use File > Save As...

It should default to the psd format.....save your 'working' copy as a psd so you can come back to it.
Its also a good idea to periodically 'Save' your work too....this will be the PSD file.
PS does not automatically save for you, there is a 'Recover' option in CC but Its not the same as a good hard 'Save'.

When you need to 'run off a copy...' for whatever reason, use 'Save For Web'.....this will give you the option to 'Save As...' PNG-24....its in a dropdown list at the top of the window.

Use the PNG to send off to whoever, upload to a web page, gallery...etc. (You can have xxx.PSD and xxx.PNG in the same folder if you want although its a more common practice to keep your PSD files somewhere separate.....just in case).

The two files are completely separate, one a in PSD format, the other in PNG format.

If you want to make a 'back-up', ALWAYS back-up the PSD file, its basically the root of any other image you save from it.


You don't have to save a psd everytime though, if its something very simple, but very complex images made from many layers would be a right pain to do again...so save it out to a PSD.

So, treat the PSD as your ROOT working file and save often.
Treat the PNG's as 'flattened' copies of the PSD.

Regards.
MrTom.

 

[ZipedX]

Borrowing this thread a little.

What about PDF in your opinion? Asking mainly from a digitalformat to paperformat point of view?