Originally posted by flyfish29
A couple of questions: It does work fine on Panther? The box specifically says OSx10.1- 10. (something)_ but doesn't say the traditional "and up". I could not find anything online that says it works with even Jaguar or Panther. I hope it does cause i am thinking of buying it soon.
Second question: When you drag a photo from iPhoto is it the original size photo with all the data?
The other thing to keep in mind...everytime you save a JPG format it degrades in quality. I talked to a guy who deals specifically with training in Photoshop (he uses Elements though personally) and he said he imports everything into Elements first...saves it as a Tiff file (best quality and preserves all the data) then he edits, adjusts, etc. and he said that way if you want to use a high quality image for printing or maybe (importing into iMovie or iPhoto--> iDVD) then you have it. I don't know for sure that Tiff is supported by iPhoto or Imovie though so check this out before you take my word for it.
1.
Yes, Photoshop Elements works completely fine with Panther. I'm currently running 10.3.1 and have had no problems (waiting for broadband before upping to 10.3.2). It also works fine in 10.2.8 as I used to have Jaguar when I first got my PowerBook. There appears to be no difference between the two - no glitches with Panther or Jaguar.
2.
When you drag the file from iPhoto you get the original file that was imported from the camera. This is what iPhoto uses. You do not lose any image quality by importing via iPhoto.
3.
Yes, you're right. JPEG is a compressed format so you will lose quality compared with some other formats. However, your digital camera will probably store the images in JPEG format anyway. So you will have lost that information in the first stage before it has been put on the computer. iPhoto does not reduce quality as there is no conversion process - it uses the format that was transferred from the camera.
TIFFs are better quality that JPEGs because they don't have to be compressed (although you can hardly notice). If your camera can take pictures in TIFF format, then iPhoto will use this when it imports it. OS X is very good when it comes to image formats. iPhoto recognises JPEG, TIFF, PICT, BMP, Photoshop, PDF and more formats anyway.
Therefore, don't worry. Using iPhoto as a middleman does not reduce the image quality. Both iPhoto and Elements can recognise most bitmap image formats and will just read/write whatever format is used by your camera, so nothing is lost along the way.
Hope that helps.