Using ACR to edit jpegs

[malc1]

Are there any downsides to using ACR to edit jpegs as demonstrated in a recent cover disk tutorial?

[Carly Drew]

Hi Malc,

There are lots of benefits to editing JPEGs in Adobe Camera Raw, as you have seen, but there are a couple of downsides too. For a start, the tool palette is limited so you don't have access to everything that you do in the full editing window of Photoshop. You also don't have access to Layers so everything has to be done on that original photograph. Similarly to this, ACR won't create an .xmp file like it would with a RAW, so all the changes are committed to the original image once you press save.

However, what you get back in terms of quality of editing more than makes up for all of that and you can always move your image to the main Photoshop editing window afterwards if you need to do any further adjustments.

Hope that makes some sense!

[malc1]

Carly
Thanks for that. At first when I read your post I thought "Do a Save As a psd file, that would avoid the quality reduction wih resaving a jpeg but as you point out, as there are no layers in ACR the changes are permanent.
Could be the advantages are outweighed by the disadvantages. the lesson here is always save your original.

[law_kid]

Originally Posted by malc1

Carly
the lesson here is always save your original.

And work on a copy.

[jamesboy]

as new to photography just got canon550d shoot in raw/jpeg setting not sure what one to save in as have adobe elements7 can u please help

[mazawatea]

If you take your pictures in both Raw & JPEG, then when you download both types will be saved to your files.
Have you tried editing with canon's DPP? Especially the RAW files. you can get an update on Canon's web site.
I am told that when you edit with elements the conversion uses different codex, , so you can get a slight difference .
I shoot in RAW only and then use DPP to convert to TIFF and then use photshop elements 7.
And I print from RAW using DPP.

[Jeff Morgan]

Originally Posted by mazawatea

..... uses different codex, , so you can get a slight difference .....

Not necessarily worse, quite often better!