gray levels are changed after using imsave function - image

Question

I used these codes to produce an RGB image with gray levels between 50 and 170.
a='C:\Users\sepideh\Desktop\IP_abadpour\S45C-113050518040.jpg';
b=imread(a);
b=b+50;
b(b>170)=170;
and you'll see when I call functions max and min, it is proved that the gray levels are between 50 and 170.
max(max(max(b)))
ans =
170
min(min(min(b)))
ans =
50
then I used imshow and imsave functions to save the image with the name "50to170"
c=imshow(b);
d=imsave(c);
Now I read the written image in this way:
a='C:\Users\sepideh\Desktop\IP_abadpour\50to170.jpg';
b=imread(a);
This time when I call max and min functions,I see:
max(max(max(b)))
ans =
235
min(min(min(b)))
ans =
16
I mean it seems that gray levels have been changed after using imshow and imsave functions!
Why does it happen?
Is it because of the format (.jpg) that I'm using when employing imsave function?

Answer 1

Instead of using imsave, use imwrite
b=imread(a);
b=b+50;
b(b>170)=170;
imwrite(b,'50to170.png','png')
Notice that I am saving it as a png file instead of a jpg to prevent compression. Bitmap also saves it without compression.
This method is a more direct way to save raw image matrices than using imshow and imsave.
If you want the same functionality of imsave (selecting where the file goes) check out "uiputfile" to get file name and location.

Answer 2

I tested it.
1.First of all you can't use imsave(b) because the function imsave expects its first input argument to be a valid handle to a single graphics object.So first you should show the image in form c=imshow(b) and then use c as an input for function imsave.
2.If you want to save the image without showing it first use function "imwrite" and pass b as the first input argument to it.
Note that if you don't want gray levels be changed after saving, you should use 'bmp' as the save format not 'jpg'.
Because 'jpg' does not support indexed images and "imwrite" converts indexed images to RGB before writing data to JPEG files so the gray levels might be changed.It's not related to the contrast stretching when showing the image in matlab.It's related to the format used to save the image.