PhotoKit-EL Saving Images

Once you learn how to use PhotoKit-EL, a very important consideration will be saving your images. If you opened up an image from a digital camera, the odds are the file format is .jpg (JPEG) which is a common file format for digital cameras. JPEGs are useful for situations where an image's file size is important such as when being written to a compact flash card or put up on a web site. However, JPEGs are not an ideal file format for digital imaging.

The way that JPEGs are created is to compress the color information while trying to preserve the luminance information. This compression process is called "lossy" because some information in an image is "lost". While the initial compression you get from a digital camera is not severe, opening a JPEG in Adobe Photoshop Elements and re-saving as a JPEG will add to the loss of image integrity. Repeated opening, modification and re-saving should be avoided.

When you run a PhotoKit-EL effect on an image, the result is a layer sitting on top of the original image. This is extremely useful for the purpose of image corrections and manipulations. However, adding layers not only adds to the size of the saved file, it also limits your choice of file formats when saving.

If you go to save an image that has a PhotoKit-EL layer on it, you will not be able to save as a JPEG because JPEGs can not have layers. So, you have several options, either flatten the image and allow Elements to re-compress the image as a JPEG or save the image in a different file format.

Because Elements tries to prevent you from accidentally saving over a file, Elements will add the word "copy" when you try to save an image as a JPEG with a layer in the file. This will prevent you from accidentally over-writing your original file. The is a good thing, but can be annoying.

At this point when saving, you can choose to manually remove the word "copy" and therefore over-write your original file. However, this will flatten the file and eliminate any layers. If you are absolutely sure you do not wish to do any additional work on the image, you may wish to do this. This will re-compress the image as a JPEG and replace your original image with your new version of the image. We recommend, however, that you give serious consideration to this decision. If there is any chance you may wish to do additional work on the image or that you may need to go back to the original image for any reason, we suggest you either leave the word "copy" in the file name or use another name addendum such as "ADJ" to preserve your original.

 

As an alternative, you may decide to keep your image with any PhotoKit-EL layers intact. This will allow you to come back to the image and make additional changes without having to worry about problems you may have with JPEG artifacts from repeated saves while preserving your layers for later editing.

Element's native file format is .PSD (Photoshop). With a PSD file, anything you create in an Elements file can be saved including image layers, adjustment layers and type layers. The PSD file format includes a level of compression using a completely lossless scheme so you can be assured that you'll never suffer recompression artifacts.

While many applications can open PSD files, there is another format that has even wider acceptance called TIFF. It should be noted however that while Elements can indeed save layered files in the TIFF file format, layered TIFFs can only be read by Elements and Photoshop at this time. TIFF files, therefore do not have the same interchangeability that PSDs have. However, TIFFs do offer additional lossless compression schemes that can make the saved file size smaller.

A TIFF can use LZW, ZIP and even JPEG compression. Note that the JPEG compression inside a TIFF is still lossy. If you select ZIP compression-the most efficient TIFF compression-you will get the following warning:

You can choose to not see this message again.

To recap, running a PhotoKit-EL effect on a file will add a layer. Not all file formats can save layers so you need to choose whether or not to save the layers or flatten. If you do flatten, consider adding a file name addition to avoid saving over your original file. If you need to save in a JPEG file format, understand that it will compress your file in a lossy manner. You should avoid re-saving over and over as a JPEG.

Both PSD and TIFF file formats can save layers. TIFF has a ZIP compression which is the most efficient lossless compression scheme.