Can I save a RAW photo as a lossless JPEG for printing in GIMP?
Asked 2/6/2012
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I edited a RAW photo using UFRaw and GIMP on Ubuntu. After exporting from UFRaw and editing in GIMP, I need to upload the final image to a printing website that accepts JPEG. When I save as JPEG, the file size drops a lot compared with the original RAW/PPM, and I’m worried about compression artifacts. Is there such a thing as a lossless JPEG that a normal print lab will accept, or should I just export a high-quality JPEG?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
14y ago
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Almost nobody uses lossless JPEG -- it's used within the DNG file format, and for some medical imaging applications, but that's about it. The probability that a file created with a JPG or JPEG extension in lossless JPEG format will be readable at the other end approaches 0 with a high degree of confidence. As for compression, well, almost all image file formats other than uncompressed TIFF will exhibit file size compression.
Unless all of your details are 1 pixel in size, a superfine JPEG compression (the highest quality the editor will permit -- that would be "quality level 12" in Photoshop, quality level 100 in the GIMP would be similar) will have so little loss that you wouldn't notice it without doing a pixel-by-pixel mathematical comparison (image subtraction). The alternative, if your service permits it, would be TIFF, but you'd want to compress that with the LZW option (lossless compression) to make the file size manageable. (It will still be much larger than a JPEG.)
Originally by user2719. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user2719
14y ago
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Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
For a normal print lab, you should export a high-quality standard JPEG.
“Lossless JPEG” exists, but it is rarely used and is generally not what websites or print labs mean when they ask for a .jpg/.jpeg file. In practice, a lossless-JPEG file may not be readable by the service at all.
Also, comparing the RAW file size to the JPEG file size is misleading: RAW contains sensor data, while JPEG is a processed image format designed to compress photographic images efficiently. A much smaller JPEG does not automatically mean visible quality loss.
For printing, save from GIMP at the highest or near-highest JPEG quality setting. At that level, any compression artifacts are typically negligible and unlikely to be visible in the print. For most real-world prints, printer and paper limits matter more than the tiny differences between a high-quality JPEG and a lossless format.
If you needed a truly lossless file for further editing, TIFF or PNG would be better choices — but if the lab specifically requires JPEG, use high-quality JPEG.
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