Re-Saving a JPG at the Same Quality Barely Hurts It, Tests Show
A developer tested how repeated saves affect image quality by re-encoding a single test photo seven times and measuring pixel-level error after each generation. Re-saving at the same quality with the same codec produced almost no additional damage, with error rising only marginally over seven saves. Switching between JPEG and WebP caused a noticeable jump in error after just one swap, and the error kept climbing slowly with each further switch. The author attributes the difference to how each codec re-quantizes the image, so changing formats compounds losses. The findings suggest that the greater risk comes from changing codecs or letting quality settings drop during re-saves, rather than from simply reopening and saving a file.
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