[Gimp-developer] jpeg quality factor

[saulgoode at flashingtwelve.brickfilms.com]

Quoting Sven Neumann <sven at gimp.org>:

> ...                                                  The happy user is
> silent. If we would do a change every time a user asks for a change,
> then GIMP would be a lot more inconsistent and probably also more buggy.
> For that reason it is important to double check if a request is valid
> and whether a change is really making things better for all users (or at
> least the target audience).

I am quite happy that the GIMP uses its own JPEG quality default  
(especially now that it can be modified). I would expect a File->Save  
to use the default I chose, not that attached to the image. If I have  
a Quality setting of 95 and I load an image that was saved with a  
Q=50, I should be very disappointed if the GIMP degraded to that level  
when I have specified that I expect less loss when saving.

IMO, the "File->Save" command should use the GIMP's default setting;  
but the ideal would be to have that default be one of the following  
options:

a. A specific quality value.
b. The quality value of the original JPEG file, if applicable
c. The greater of 'a' and 'b'
d. The original DCT coefficients, if available

I would not consider any of 'b', 'c', and 'd' to be improvements if  
'a' were not available as an option.