Does simply opening and closing a JPEG file decrease image quality?

Question

I've had quite a few photography classes, read many photography books, and screened many forums. And I can't find a consistent answer to this question. One "camp" says there is a loss of image quality every time you open and close a JPEG file (due to compression). Other camp says there is no loss of image quality unless you actually EDIT the photo, then re-save it.

Does it make a difference if:

• I open the image in a standard image viewer and simple "close" the pic?
• I open the image in Photoshop Elements Editor and close it there?
• If I simply close an image vs. re-saving it?

Can someone give simple answer on when closing or saving a JPEG causes a decrease in image quality and when it does not?

Answer 1

This is based on a misunderstanding. Loss of quality happens only during the compression that is done when an image is saved as JPEG. But it doesn't matter whether it was edited or not.

So: you will (with some very specific exceptions, see comments) lose quality if you open an image in an image editor and re-save it, even if you didn't make any edits. But if you only open it to display it and then close it instead of saving, then nothing will change.

By the way: this is only for traditional image editing programs like Photoshop. Programs like Lightroom that "develop" RAW files follow a different approach (even when handling JPEG files): they always keep the original image intact and separately save the editing steps that were done, which are applied when exporting the final results. So with such programs, you don't have to worry about losing quality (more than once, that is). But then, you shouldn't be using JPEG source files for them anyway.

Answer 2

Absolutely not. You need to edit the file and re-save it as a JPEG in order to compound the effects of image compression. Just viewing it has no effect at all — if it did, all of the JPEGs on the web would "wear out" completely in a day or two at most.

Answer 3

JPEG compression can be described as having two distinct phases: first a lossy phase, then a lossless phase. Understanding the difference between them is important to this question. This isn't so much because it helps understanding what's going on, but because it helps to understand where the common mistakes come from.

Lossy compression happens only when the file is saved. This is the part that causes loss of quality. However, just closing the file is not enough to trigger lossy compression: you have to save it. Some editors may refuse to save JPEG files that haven't been edited, to avoid accidentally triggering lossless compression, but I don't know off the top of my head whether or not any editors actually do that.

Lossless compression also happens only when the file is saved. The main difference is that even if it happened when the file was closed without saving, it wouldn't matter, because it's lossless. JPEG uses both techniques together.

Lossless decompression happens whenever the file is opened, but not at any other time. Not when it's closed, and not even when it's saved. As with lossless decompression, it wouldn't matter even if it did happen during these times, because it's lossleess.

"Lossy decompression" never happens. There's no such thing. There can't be, because the data that got thrown out during the lossy compression phase is gone. If you could somehow reconstruct it, then you'd have a lossless compression algorithm, not a lossy one. I'm only even mentioning the concept because, having mentioned two types of compression, it would look strange if I mentioned one only type of decompression without explaining why.

Note that saving the file triggers both kinds of compression. There's not much of a way around this, unless you know that the image has not been edited, but then there isn't much point to saving it either. Note also that just closing the file without saving does not trigger either phase, not even the "safe" lossless compression. Because of this, just opening and closing the file cannot decrease image quality.

Answer 4

Just opening and closing a JPEG file should not trigger a save command (in any program that I know of) and therefore there is no re-compression taking place.

For the times that you actually DO hit "save", what happens depends on what changes you've made and how smart the image program in question is.

The user CutNGlass has already mentioned an example of a smart image program, "Better JPEG", that takes advantage of the fact that JPEG images are made up of lots of independently encoded rectangular blocks of pixels, and only blocks that really NEED to are re-compressed when saving the image. For example, with such a program, you can remove red eyes and when the JPEG image is saved, only the blocks that were affected by the change are re-compressed. http://www.betterjpeg.com/features.htm

Now, this technique to avoid having to re-compress any part of a JPEG image that does not need to be re-compressed is really "old news" (I'm no expert and I've known it for over a decade), so I guess I've taken it somewhat for granted that all the good image handling programs would handle this perfectly by now (which would mean that there would not normally be any re-compression from just opening a JPEG image and pressing "save", because the program would know that there has been no alteration to any blocks, and just leave them untouched), but from looking at this question and its varying answers, I can only gather that this STILL isn't true! *Maybe the programming behind such solutions is more complicated than I believe it to be - otherwise all JPEG-handling programs would have had this years ago!*

Answer 5

You definitely won't lose any quality just by viewing it. But, as pointed out above, you may lose image quality when saving it without making changes if the editor compresses it when it saves the file. For example, say you have a JPEG at no compression:

1. You open it in The GIMP, make no changes, and save it
2. The GIMP asks you how much compression you want (quality)
3. You enter 90% quality (the default)

Do this 20 times, and you'll see a significant decrease in quality, because it has been compressed 20 times. If you save it with no compression (100% quality), you'll see no change.

Answer 6

Definitely, like any file, if you don't hit "save" but just close the file, no changes will be made. (think of it like a word Doc that you just open and close)

If you do make changes, most programs will give you a notification asking if you want to "save changes"

So the answer is definitely no to your question.

Hope that helps.

Answer 7

Simply put:

• Opening: no loss of quality
• Copying: no loss of quality
• Displaying: no loss of quality
• Saving without edits: is copying, no loss of quality*
• Saving with only metadata edits: no loss of quality*
• Saving with changes to compression quality: loss of quality
• Saving after image data edits: loss of quality

*Dependant on program, poorly implemented programs may actually recompress even when not needed with the resultant quality loss

Decoding any digital data is lossless. There is not a single digital format in which mere decoding and display would alter the data.

It's only recompression of the image data that is potentially lossy. Certain editing operations that are actually just metadata edits should not cause any loss of quality, for example EXIF rotation is lossless.

Answer 8

Simply put No.

To be specific. When saving the JPEG image you have some losses as JPEG is defined as lossy compression.

The image is compressed using Huffman coding if I am not mistaken. Now when an image editor opens up an image it does not decompress the image. It simply decodes the compressed image so the screen can show what is in it.

But when you make changes and re-save it the image is recompressed to a new jpeg with more data loss. Software like GIMP ask you how much quality you want though so you can choose 100% to keep the existing quality.

Now opening and closing an image without making any changes would never matter on how it's stored and what data is lost. Opening it for viewing and then closing does not make any changes to the file. No matter what the case (mp3, image, word document). Since nothing is saved the quality will always remain the same.

But as previous answers have said, if you are really worried about data loss you can simply use other formats like png or tiff.

Answer 9

There seems to be a lot of misinformation even in these answers.

JPEG is a lossy block encoding standard. Its a frequency domain code that gets its compression by representing higher frequency image components with lower precision. The block size is 8x8 pixels.

To encode a JPEG image you take each block, perform a 2-D DCT and record the result in a sort of zig-zag pattern with fewer and fewer bits starting at the lowest frequency and ending at the highest. The precision profile is governed by a single quality variable.

As long as you've done this process on a block once, you can decode and re-encode as many times as you want without losing any image quality (as long as you always use the same quality variable). This isn't an overstatement; the process of decoding and re-encoding a jpeg block can be made perfectly lossless, and any editing application worth its salt already can do this.

What does this mean for a person editing an image? If you open an image and save (re-encode) it with the same image quality there will be no loss of quality(your editing application should be able to tell you the quality variable used to encode the image). If you open an image and only edit some of it, the only blocks that will change at all are the 8x8 blocks you have edited. Everything else will be exactly the same.

Answer 10

The simple answer is "That depends."

Does it make a difference if:

I open the image in a standard image viewer and simple "close" the pic?

Should be safe, as a viewer should never be able to change image.

I open the image in Photoshop Elements Editor and close it there?

Should not change image.

If I simply Close and image vs. Re-saving it?

Closing image should not change image. Re-saving image very likely would alter it, depending on the plug-ins you are using.

One reason you will find so many different answers for "when does closing or saving a JPEG causes a decrease in image quality and when it does not?" is that it depends on so many different things, including: the software you are using to edit the image, the plug-ins which are installed on that software, whether your software performs "auto-saves", and on the settings which you use when you save the jpg image! That is actually why I do not edit original files.

I do not use photoshop, but there is a plug-in which is available for it which is supposed to help with the specific issue in question -- avoiding loss of image quality when saving a jpeg: http://www.betterjpeg.com/jpeg-plug-in.htm

Better JPEG Lossless Resave plug-in for Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Photoshop Elements is a tool designed to avoid recompression losses when resaving edited JPEG images in Photoshop. The plug-in takes advantage of the fact that JPEG images consist of a number of small independent blocks and does not recompress unchanged blocks.

Answer 11

Interesting sets of answers. But some still are a little misleading. I will try to sumarize.

Absolutly not

1) Opening a file does not afect it in any way. Also closing it. Not in a viewer or editing program.

There is a chance you view the file diferent in diferent programs but that could be because how this program inteprets some information like color mode or color profile. But that process is only reading it.

There is a chance of small changes

2) Doing losless operations, like rotating an image. Normally the programs just re order the data of a jpg file, without analizing and recompressing. But I would not put my hands on the fire for all programs that supose to do that.

Small unnotorious changes

3) Opening and saving with the same compression on the same program.

A first recompression is done the first time you save a jpg file. If you save a second time the file with the same settings the original data loss is already done, but small changes can be applied again. Not in the same extent that the first one, but can be noticable doing this several times. But that depends on the program.

Noticable changes

4) The most obvious is re saving with a different compression setting.

Not only on the "scale" on whatever the program has, but also the algorithm used. This is a little too technical but there are at least two main acompression algorithms 4:4:4 and 4:2:2.

You could use the "slider" on your program to top "quality", but if your program is using 4:2:2 and the original was on 4:4:4 you will have a significant data loss.

Here is a small paper I made some years ago so you can see what this data loss means, it is in spanish but you can use google translate: http://otake.com.mx/Apuntes/PruebasDeCompresion2/1-CompresionJpgProceso.htm

A total mess

5) If you open an image and re save it on a program that has limited capabilities. For example, a viwer could only save RGB files and not work properly with CMYK ones, or perhaps it does not understand the embeded color profile. You could totally ruin your image on saving.

6) Using a lot of compression. You save it for your website and compressed it. Do not delet your originals pease!

Only on the edited part of the image

7) The recompression is normally performed on all the image, but as I mentioned on point 3, it is not a lot of it if the image has not changed. When you edit an image this analisis has to be made again on this edited portion.

Remember that an editing can be categorized in three groups.

a) Color corrections, contrast, etc.

b) Altering one part of an image (red eyes, removing a person, cleaning unwanted spots)

c) A totally new collage.

So in some cases the image is a totally diferent one, at least for the analisis and recompression point of view.

In this post: https://photo.stackexchange.com/a/67434/37321 the user mentioned a program that does a very clever analisis of the existing compression and does not re compress it again if it is not necessary.

Answer 12

Yes, it obviously does! I will just do it with sample image and JPEG quality of 30 to make it fast Initial image. (160 Kb)

First round (10 Kb)

Second round (9Kb)

So, JPEG doesn’t decrease significantly decrease quality of the image as long as you don’t resize or change quality metric. Image will continue to slowly deteriorate, but insignificantly. And now, I remove just 4 pixels from the image (a column from right). And save again.

Significant deterioration. To explain that we would need to dive deep into JPEG algorithm. Any way, if you find yourself in this situation, keep it mind – it’s not over. There is some great JPEG noise removal software, for example Neural network image super-resolution and enhancement . I’ve uploaded the last image (the worst one) into this service and here’s what I got. Really nice result.