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When I save a JPG file with GIMP, I can adjust the quality I save it at, from 0-100 (I use 89). It seems like I've used an app to see what this number was on saved file but if I did I can't for the life of me figure out what it was. Any suggestions as to what to use?

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4 Answers 4

up vote 16 down vote accepted

Once saved, you cannot tell the quality anymore.

(Setting the quality while saving just tells the software how much loss you find acceptable, but once saved: what's lost is lost. You'd need a human to say if something looks nice.)

Hmmm, I guess I was wrong. I still think the above is correct, but ImageMagick's identify proves me wrong?

identify -verbose myimage.jpg

Image: myimage.jpg
  Format: JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group JFIF format)
  Class: DirectClass
  Geometry: 358x240+0+0
  Resolution: 300x300
  Compression: JPEG
  Quality: 90
  Orientation: Undefined

I don't know how the image in my test was saved, but it does not have any EXIF data. Could the quality still be stored in the image?

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Can't you experiment converting to different qualities? I find it hard to believe, unless ImageMagick stores some private data in the jpg (so this might not work with other packages). –  harrymc Oct 29 '09 at 20:37
Interesting. I'll wait to see how this pans out. –  Nathaniel Oct 29 '09 at 21:10
+1 Yes imagemagick works. I can repeatedly change the jpeg quality and use identify to see the change. This works if I use convert (another imagemagick untility) or another tool like MS Photo Editor. –  DaveParillo Oct 29 '09 at 22:20

To add to Arjan's answer:

ImageMagick's identify appears to actually look inside the JPEG image to guess the quality setting used to encode it.

ImageMagick's source code (cheer for free software :-)) contains the lines:

  Determine the JPEG compression quality from the quantization tables.
for (i=0; i < NUM_QUANT_TBLS; i++)
  if (jpeg_info.quant_tbl_ptrs[i] != NULL)
    for (j=0; j < DCTSIZE2; j++)

(coders/jpeg.c, line 843ff. in my recent version of ImageMagick's source code).

I don't know enough about JPEG to really understand, but it appears to do something like described in this article:

Determine the JPEG quality factor by using Visual C# .NET


So yes, identify can actually determine the quality setting of a JPEG just from the compressed file alone (though the result may not always be completely accurate).

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Whoa. Very nice of you to check the source code. Cool. –  Nathaniel Jan 4 '10 at 20:17

As Arjan metioned identify -verbose myimage.jpg will do it. As imagemagick is a CLI tool, it may be useful for scripting. The approach identify -verbose myimage.jpg | grep ... is preety slow. I recommend using IM like this

identify -format '%Q' myimage.jpg

It is massively faster.

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With ImageMagick++ library it's easy:

Image magick_image( pathname );
size_t compressionFactor = magick_image.quality(); // 0..100
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