I've been trying to find a way to take a bunch of jpeg images and while maintaining their quality (no loss at all) compile them in such a way as to make one coherent file. Maybe something like a pdf, but while maintaining quality. I've tried converting to pdf and djvu, but the quality is always reduced, but if you know of a way to preserve quality, I'll use it.

An alternative is an image viewer that can look inside archives, so I just make a zip or tgz of the images and then use the image viewer to access them. I've tried a few, but they are ancient, and they don't compile or work.

Most of the programs you use for conversion will let you specify either a compression level or alternately a quality level. Try setting it at the highest quality or least compression available.

Check this out:

Stack images one on top of the next vertically:
To connect them side by side, use +append instead of -append

Now, to view them in a handy way, use `feh` (which allows easy up/down of the image-strip with the mouse button, and maybe keyboard too, but I didn't try it).

See here for details & much more neat stuff to do with images:
http://www.imagemagick.org/script/co...1mkhj44#append
Sasha

How about something like Scribus or even OOo? I think that page layout programs typically preserve image quality. (But I would have assumed the same was possible with PDF)

Thanks for the suggestions, so far the best thing I found was just to zip them up and use a .cbz viewer to open them, works great, is fast, no loss in quality.

@ GrapefruiTgirl: That would be an option, but unfortunately these images are rather large and if I concatenate them it gets harder to open them, and harder to scroll across them and zoom and stuff.

I can definitely understand how that might become a problem, depending on number of images and size of images, and especially if the machine is undersized for the job of viewing them.

Before posting, I tested it out by tacking together 5 dual-monitor wallpapers (3360x1050) into a strip, and found no trouble opening and navigating it, but again, I can definitely see how this might not be ideal in some cases.

In any event, I'm glad you have found a working solution.

if you do not want a lose of data( quality ) then USE A LOSSLESS format .
Like png it is a lossless compressed ( uses gzip) format

jpg's are a pet peeve of mine -- They should be illegal!!!!

Yes, yes, I know, unfortunately most images on the net are jpeg ... I don't think converting these to png now will improve quality that has already been lost.

now will improve quality that has already been lost.

no but i do "try" to put back in the "lost " data

that is a fun job , ha,ha,ha,

Have you tried using "montage" from the ImageMagick set of tools?