Editing JPEG (section)

==Typical use==
The JPEG compression algorithm operates at its best on photographs and paintings of realistic scenes with smooth variations of tone and color. For web usage, where reducing the amount of data used for an image is important for responsive presentation, JPEG's compression benefits make JPEG popular. JPEG/[[Exif]] is also the most common format saved by digital cameras.

However, JPEG is not well suited for line drawings and other textual or iconic graphics, where the sharp contrasts between adjacent pixels can cause noticeable artifacts.<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal |last=Kaur |first=Rajandeep |date=May 2016 |title=A Review of Image Compression Techniques |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303325238 |journal=International Journal of Computer Applications |volume=142 |issue=1 |pages=8–11 |doi=10.5120/ijca2016909658}}</ref> Such images are better saved in a [[Lossless data compression#Raster graphics|lossless graphics format]] such as [[TIFF]], [[Graphics Interchange Format|GIF]], [[Portable Network Graphics|PNG]], or a [[raw image format]]. The JPEG standard includes a lossless coding mode, but that mode is not supported in most products.

As the typical use of JPEG is a [[lossy compression]] method, which reduces the image fidelity, it is inappropriate for exact reproduction of imaging data (such as some scientific and medical imaging applications and certain technical [[image processing]] work).<ref name=":0" />

JPEG is also not well suited to files that will undergo multiple edits, as some image quality is lost each time the image is recompressed, particularly if the image is cropped or shifted, or if encoding parameters are changed&nbsp;– see [[digital generation loss]] for details. To prevent image information loss during sequential and repetitive editing, the first edit can be saved in a lossless format, subsequently edited in that format, then finally published as JPEG for distribution.