Digital Imaging and Photography → What JPEG quality shall I use for my pics?

Hello everybody,

I am really new into the Digital Imaging world. I was playing around with my images, and edited them, and I was wondering what JPEG quality I shall use for my pictures.

The camera I use is a Olympus C-370 Zoom (3.2 MP) and the pictures that I have edited, are mainly used for publishing on the internet, so I want a good quality, but not a large filesize. Does anybody have any suggestions on what quality I shall use? I can choose from 1 (really bad) to 100 (really good).

Thanks in advance.

Jeff

I don't really know that camera as far as it's range in quality, but I'd suggest using a higher, if not highest quality. Odds are you'll be resizing the pics for the internet which will reduce the file size.

I'd suggest that you take the pics in the highest quality setting possible and then archive the origional. When you edit push it down to a lower setting say 50-75% should be in a range of quality that you are happy with.

Of course if your using Photoshop it will give you previews at different quality settings.

You can always take away detail and size but once its gone you can't bring it back......

I would set the camera it's highest setting. You never know when you are going to want to enlarge a pic, or may have to crop to get a better shot of something far away. There's reputable color lab that requires the files you send them for prints be saved in photoshop to level 10 out of 12 (that amounts to about 80%) so thats what I use as a rule of thumb when saving to jpeg.

The jpg size you choose is going to depend largely on what size your memory card is b/c the higher the quality image the more it eats the memory. I've got mine set at 1024 x 768 which is way large for my purposes, but 9 times out of 10 I adjust the image down to 800 x 600 or smaller for web purposes anyway without any major loss of quality.