does ps auto compress on opening image.

[xrayxray]

I have been taking pics with my digital camera, for over a year. It is set on the fine (highest quality) setting and takes the images usually around 700K to 900K.
Recently when I open a picture in PS6 the image is already compressed and I loose image quality when zooming.
How do I stop this.

THANKS, RAY.

 

[blueark]

Simply opening an image in Photoshop will not degrade image quality. If you re-save an open image using a lossy compression algorithm (eg, if you open an image and resave it as a JPEG), then the quality will degrade. The more you open and resave the same image, the more quality will be lost.

If you have you image set to the highest quality your camera can manage, then the best thing to do is open it, and resave it using a lossless compression, or no compression at all. For example, save it as a Photoshop file (.psd) or a TIFF. Then you can resave it as much as you like without any compression artifacts creeping in.

As for zooming, if you zoom past 100%, the pixels in the image are going to become more noticable. If you enlarge the image using Image Size, Photoshop can only guess what pixels to use, so again, the quality is going to suffer.