I just hate to sound snobbish but maybe New York photographers, artists, models and their agents view web portfolios differently than those in Santa Fe or other parts of the country.
Don't be so sure. Are you positive that 100% have calibrated displays and are using Safari? If not, you can't at all be sure that what YOU see and what THEY see match.
But can you flatten multiple times on the same image?
Sure. You can't flatten an image that doesn't have layers, its flat. You can build a layer for one task, keep it or flatten it, keep others non flattened. But one thing is for sure, before you upload, you're going to have a flat file. JPEG doesn't support layers!
If you flatten and sharpen a JPEG and find that the JPEG needs a tweak Curve, adding the Curve turns the JPEG into a PSD. Flattening once again after the tweak Curve, converts the PSD back to JPEG.
No, it flattens the file, it can be a PSD. You have to tell Photoshop what format you want. But if you want a JPEG, for the web, its flat.
Are there no file degradation issues here?
Every time you re-save a JEPG, there's more data loss. Do you see it?
Cosmetic ads require perfection. Fine art pieces, too. At the prices these command, no one is willing to compromise on quality, even for web presentation.
Sorry but you can't control this. You can control the quality of ink on paper, you can control the quality of a web image you view. You can't control the quality of what a zillion other people view from the web. Its just as simple as that.
If you down-sample incrementally on the final TIFF, why wouldn't a perfectionist down-sample incrementally on a web-portfolio presentation?
Because you'll never see the difference and even if you did, there's absolutely no guarantee anyone else would.
Is their a sound argument that says don't waste your time, even with an action?
Its your time, knock yourself out. And when it looks prefect on your display, just consider that it may look totally different on someone else. Does that make you feel better?
First, my "kid" days are long over and, second, nobody at Thaddaeus Ropac thinks web presentation is a game. Perfectionists bang heads, it's their nature.
You can't prefect something you have no control over. You can prefect something you can control.
I get that. But does that mean Fine Art does not have its own optimization considerations for web view?
Fine art printing is about producing a print YOU can view under a controlled environment (sometimes you can't control the environment). But the difference, unless you're viewing the print under some really odd illuminant isn't going to be anywhere as variable as the millions of users, working with all nature of displays, of differing ages and conditions, using non color managed browsers. Maybe some day this will change (one would hope). The facts remain, every user is working with vastly different displays and browsers and operating systems and bandwidth. Compare this to controlling how a print, or even a magazine reproduction appears is pretty simple.