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| Why Not to Scan Photos to JPG SUMMARY: Scan photos to TIF or PNG formats instead of JPG to help prevent image quality degradation.
When you scan photographs, your scanner software may provide options on what file format to use when storing the graphics (a file format is the way, or algorithm, that the bits that make up a picture are organized). If you are given options for TIF or PNG images as well as JPG, take the TIF, PNG, or BMP format.
Why? JPG images are 'lossy' compressed. Images stored in this format will take up less hard drive space than TIF images, but the image quality may not be quite as high as you expect. Even if you don't notice any visible difference in quality between images stored in this format and an uncompressed image in TIF format, if you print a picture from a JPG image, you may start to see smears or blurs. Also, if you manipulate the image and re-save it as a JPG again, you will probably see some degradation.
TIF, PNG, and BMP images, on the other hand, take up much more space on your hard disk, but they more faithfully reproduce the original photographs. And remember - if image size is a concern, you can always change TIF, PNG, or BMP images to JPGs later.
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