Adobe Photoshop

Problems with JPEG files

Starting with Adobe Photoshop 7.0 (and Photoshop Elements 2.0 which is based on Photoshop 7.0 code), by default, there is a difference between the "save for web" and the other type of saves. "Save" and "Save As" now imbed XML "preview" data (including a thumbnail) in the JPG file while "Save for web" does not.

I did a test with some of my images and PSE 2.0 does indeed add XML data to the JPG file when "save" and "save as" are used but not when "save for web" is used.

While the imbedded XML data is within the jpg specification, a lot of programs were written without any code to handle it and some programs are having problems with it. Quark and other page formating programs have a problem and other programs may have problems also. Internet Explorer (IE) has a big problem. If IE trys to view a web page with one of these images with imbedded XML, it will stall in the downloading of the image and not all images will appear even when you leave that page and go to other sites.

I did some research on this and found that in PE2 there is a preferences option that controls this behavior. From the main menu, go to Edit->Preferences->Saving Files. There will be a drop-down box labled "Image Previews:" and the default selection is "Always Save". You can change it to "Never Save" or "Ask When Saving". I tested this and it appears that only the thumbnail is affected by this setting. Even when "Never Save" was selected, the XML data was still present (although the thumbnail was omitted)".

I guess the moral of this is that if you want the jpg to be displayed on the web, be sure to use the "save for web" option. And if you have other programs that are having problems with your jpg images, try turning off the imbedded thumbnail and if that doesn't work, use "save for web" for those as well.