Some old jpegs decay and fade.

Peter,

I have some scanned JPEGs from some old photos,
and over time they have faded and become speckled.
This has happened only to a few.
Why has this happened?

Assuming this isn't a hoax, the only reason a JPG photo (or any digital
file) would change over time is if the media they are stored on is failing
(or a virus has corrupted the files).

The first thing I would do is scan your drive for surface errors. One or
two errors isn't a big deal, they will be mapped so they won't be used
again. But when you start getting bad sectors, it usually escalates fairly
quickly, so I would rescan the drive periodically until you can replace it
with a new drive (which I would do as soon as possible).

Next, I would scan the computer for viruses and spyware. The free
MalwareBytes anti-malware works good for this.

If your JPG's are on optical media, the disc's are probably failing. It is
quite common for CDR's and DVDR's to degrade after a year or two. They
usually degrade from the outer edges inward, so the more you have stored on
the disc, the more likely you'll have data corruption.

Most importantly, you should be backing up your original files regularly.
Drives and media WILL fail, it's just a matter of WHEN. Without backup
copies of your files, you will probably lose them...

Take care,

Anthony Watson
Mountain Software
www.mountain-software.com
Home Cookin Recipe Software
www.mountain-software.com/homecook.htm

On 2012.09.16 12:08 , HerHusband wrote:
Peter,

I have some scanned JPEGs from some old photos,
and over time they have faded and become speckled.
This has happened only to a few.
Why has this happened?

Assuming this isn't a hoax, the only reason a JPG photo (or any digital
file) would change over time is if the media they are stored on is failing
(or a virus has corrupted the files).

The nature of the speckles suggests it's anything but a data failure.


--
"C'mon boys, you're not laying pipe!".
-John Keating.

On 16/09/2012 17:08, HerHusband wrote:
Peter,

I have some scanned JPEGs from some old photos,
and over time they have faded and become speckled.
This has happened only to a few.
Why has this happened?

Assuming this isn't a hoax, the only reason a JPG photo (or any digital
file) would change over time is if the media they are stored on is failing
(or a virus has corrupted the files).

The problem is that the fault shown is not characteristic of a corrupt
JPEG stream - that usually affects the decoding of the rest of the file
in a gross and unmistakable way. This salt and pepper noise was encoded
into the JPEG file and has been faithfully reproduced!

The first thing I would do is scan your drive for surface errors. One or
two errors isn't a big deal, they will be mapped so they won't be used
again. But when you start getting bad sectors, it usually escalates fairly
quickly, so I would rescan the drive periodically until you can replace it
with a new drive (which I would do as soon as possible).

Next, I would scan the computer for viruses and spyware. The free
MalwareBytes anti-malware works good for this.

It is just about possible that a virus or trojan is doing it but all the
ones I have ever encountered merely replace the unfortunate file with
the same number of zeros.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

On 2012.09.15 03:16 , Peter Jason wrote:
On Thu, 13 Sep 2012 17:18:16 -0400, Alan Browne
wrote:

On 2012.09.11 21:55 , Peter Jason wrote:
I have some scanned JPEGs from some old photos,
and over time they have faded and become speckled.

This has happened only to a few.

Why has this happened?

Were the photos repeatedly opened and re-saved?

They have passed thru Microsoft "Digital Image
Suite 9" first as tiff files and then converted to
jpgs (after which the Suite didnt work any more),
but some are OK.

An example of a decayed photo of 1988 scanned in
from negative color film. Note the fine white
snow throught the picture.
http://imageshack.us/a/img832/1747/1988a1decay.jpg

That photo had issues from when it was last saved and/or previous saves.
The detail was okay in the original image. The noise seems to be from
an edit or botched copy of some kind.

Nothing about storage caused this. This sleeping file had the defect
when it was last saved.

Were it a storage defect it would start at some point and continue for
many pixel rows, probably to the end. And it would not be "speckles".

--
"C'mon boys, you're not laying pipe!".
-John Keating.

Peter Jason wrote:
On Thu, 13 Sep 2012 17:18:16 -0400, Alan Browne
wrote:

On 2012.09.11 21:55 , Peter Jason wrote:
I have some scanned JPEGs from some old photos,
and over time they have faded and become speckled.

This has happened only to a few.

Why has this happened?

Were the photos repeatedly opened and re-saved?

They have passed thru Microsoft "Digital Image
Suite 9" first as tiff files and then converted to
jpgs (after which the Suite didnt work any more),
but some are OK.

An example of a decayed photo of 1988 scanned in
from negative color film. Note the fine white
snow throught the picture.
http://imageshack.us/a/img832/1747/1988a1decay.jpg

Seen this before. I don't know if it was permanent or due to the viewer.
Too few occurrences.

Greg

On 17/09/2012 01:32, gregz wrote:
Peter Jason wrote:
On Thu, 13 Sep 2012 17:18:16 -0400, Alan Browne
wrote:

On 2012.09.11 21:55 , Peter Jason wrote:
I have some scanned JPEGs from some old photos,
and over time they have faded and become speckled.

This has happened only to a few.

Why has this happened?

Were the photos repeatedly opened and re-saved?

They have passed thru Microsoft "Digital Image
Suite 9" first as tiff files and then converted to
jpgs (after which the Suite didnt work any more),
but some are OK.

An example of a decayed photo of 1988 scanned in
from negative color film. Note the fine white
snow throught the picture.
http://imageshack.us/a/img832/1747/1988a1decay.jpg

Seen this before. I don't know if it was permanent or due to the viewer.

I don't know of any JPEG decoder that would make such a complete mess of
a valid image file. I do know plenty of "equalise histogram" functions
that would do this or even worse to an underexposed image.

Too few occurrences.

The OP has been unhelpful to the point of totally misleading in
describing his workflow since the image he shows as a sample of the
problem *WAS NOT* saved by the package that he said he used!

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

On Mon, 17 Sep 2012 08:02:59 +0100, Martin Brown
wrote:

On 17/09/2012 01:32, gregz wrote:
Peter Jason wrote:
On Thu, 13 Sep 2012 17:18:16 -0400, Alan Browne
wrote:

On 2012.09.11 21:55 , Peter Jason wrote:
I have some scanned JPEGs from some old photos,
and over time they have faded and become speckled.

This has happened only to a few.

Why has this happened?

Were the photos repeatedly opened and re-saved?

They have passed thru Microsoft "Digital Image
Suite 9" first as tiff files and then converted to
jpgs (after which the Suite didnt work any more),
but some are OK.

An example of a decayed photo of 1988 scanned in
from negative color film. Note the fine white
snow throught the picture.
http://imageshack.us/a/img832/1747/1988a1decay.jpg

Seen this before. I don't know if it was permanent or due to the viewer.

I don't know of any JPEG decoder that would make such a complete mess of
a valid image file. I do know plenty of "equalise histogram" functions
that would do this or even worse to an underexposed image.

Too few occurrences.

The OP has been unhelpful to the point of totally misleading in
describing his workflow since the image he shows as a sample of the
problem *WAS NOT* saved by the package that he said he used!

I have forgotten all the steps because I scanned
the film with a Minolta 35mm slide/negative
scanner as tiff files which I reduced later to
jpeg. This was in approx 2003.

I'm thinking of doing it all again with a faster
scanner.

Is there any proper software for databaseing the
3000 photos I have with appropriate keywords, like
the Microsoft "Digital Image Suite 9"? My
workflow at the moment is:

1/ Dump photos from the camera into a folder.
2/ Copy all these into another (working) folder
called "Cropped6x4, PShopped, Culled".
3/ Crop 6 x 4, adjust levels, and sharpness,
annotate on the photo itself, and save as jpeg.

Is this OK? Notice I keep the originals.

On 17/09/2012 23:14, Peter Jason wrote:
On Mon, 17 Sep 2012 08:02:59 +0100, Martin Brown
wrote:

On 17/09/2012 01:32, gregz wrote:
Peter Jason wrote:

An example of a decayed photo of 1988 scanned in
from negative color film. Note the fine white
snow throught the picture.
http://imageshack.us/a/img832/1747/1988a1decay.jpg

Seen this before. I don't know if it was permanent or due to the viewer.

I don't know of any JPEG decoder that would make such a complete mess of
a valid image file. I do know plenty of "equalise histogram" functions
that would do this or even worse to an underexposed image.

Too few occurrences.

The OP has been unhelpful to the point of totally misleading in
describing his workflow since the image he shows as a sample of the
problem *WAS NOT* saved by the package that he said he used!

I have forgotten all the steps because I scanned
the film with a Minolta 35mm slide/negative
scanner as tiff files which I reduced later to
jpeg. This was in approx 2003.

I'm thinking of doing it all again with a faster
scanner.

If you still have the original TIFF scan of the sample image you put up
then it should be possible to work out what went wrong and where. My
money is still on a seriously underexposed original image.

Also the image was rather small in size for a slide or negative scan.

Is there any proper software for databaseing the
3000 photos I have with appropriate keywords, like
the Microsoft "Digital Image Suite 9"? My

No idea. I don't particularly like database software.

workflow at the moment is:

1/ Dump photos from the camera into a folder.
2/ Copy all these into another (working) folder
called "Cropped6x4, PShopped, Culled".
3/ Crop 6 x 4, adjust levels, and sharpness,
annotate on the photo itself, and save as jpeg.

Is this OK? Notice I keep the originals.

Probably. It depends how well you do the image adjustments.
I would not bother cropping unless I was intending to reprint YMMV.

I generally scan stuff as a batch and then adjust later.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown