Saving census records to my hard drive

[Kevin, now in Chester]

Grateful for advice on saving records from commercial websites to my hard drive.

I save as jpeg files and reopen through MS Picture Manager, but they lose their sharpness/clarity when viewing later, especially when they are expanded. Eventually I had hoped to print up to A3.

This must be a common problem, so apologies if it has been asked (often) before.

Kevin in Vienna

[deebel]

Someone once told me that jpeg files lose info every time they are saved, however I am not an expert.

[downside]

Can you check what size you image files are. 

They should be approximately 500-690kb each if they are .jpg.

I have various files that are .jpg + .tif + .pdf and they all seem to be sharp.

[Kevin, now in Chester]

Thank you for your responses.

The .jpg files range from 84KB up to 1254KB, but mostly between 100 to 200KB, even though I have used the same method of saving each census record.  Is this size something that I can adjust?

I notice that when I enlarge within the commercial website, the document automatically refocuses to give a sharper/clearer image, but this doesn't happen when I enlarge within MS Picture Manager.

Thanks again for your advice.

Kevin in Vienna

[downside]

Are you having problems with all images or just the smaller ones i.e. 100-200kb?

[Kevin, now in Chester]

Same problem for all files. 

When I first save the docs, I do use the Auto Correct facility in MS Office Picture Manager before saving, which "improves" the initial image, but perhaps this has an impact on the quality of expanded images.   

Thank you for taking the time to consider this issue.

Kevin in Vienna

[jim1]

Website images tend to be scanned at 72 dpi as a default.You can't improve on this from your end.The only way to improve the quality is to get a better scan at 300 dpi.
Ancestry or FindMyPast images are scanned at a higher resolution & there shouldn't be a problem with these but you don't say where you are getting yours from.


jim

[Koromo]

Hi Kevin

I don't know which commercial websites you are referring to, but on Ancestry I enlarge the census image as big as it will go using their drop-down menu which goes up to 200%.  When the image has fully loaded (and in sharp focus) then I'll right-click and save it to my computer.  Typically the image size is about 95x80cm at 72dpi with a file size of 500-700 KB.

(On Ancestry I use the basic/standard viewer because they've never made a Mac-compatible advanced viewer.)


Koromo

[RJ_Paton]

Same problem for all files. 

When I first save the docs, I do use the Auto Correct facility in MS Office Picture Manager before saving, which "improves" the initial image, but perhaps this has an impact on the quality of expanded images.   

Thank you for taking the time to consider this issue.

Kevin in Vienna

Simply viewing a jpg image and then closing the viewer or copying the image to your machine has no effect on the image quality BUT what you are describing here does. Any alteration to the image and then saving it causes the resultant image to be saved at the settings used on your image program and causes an overall degradation of the original image quality.

Check the image settings on your own machine to see what compression percentage the program is using to create the "new" jpg.