Comment 4 for bug 871563

This is quite bad. The effect is even worse with saturated colors where the chroma subsampling effects are more visible.
I'm attaching a screenshot showing the problem. It's quite evident and it's really difficult to miss it in this example.

I know this problem has been around for a while, but I think it's quite serious, maybe enough to consider it as a blocker for 0.49.
It may not sound as a big deal, but this bug has something that makes it worse: It can easily go unnoticed and affects quality.
Sometimes the effect isn't evident when the artwork is zoomed or the image is small in the document, and the user could easily miss the detrimental effect of the recompression in the image quality until it's too late.

For someone like me, a graphic designer using inkscape for his job, this is as bad as the cairo downscaling bug or any crasher. It results in quality loss, and that's something unacceptable for a desiger/artist.
Inkscape, as a program for artists and designers, should ensure image quality, therefore this bug should be marked as a high importance issue, although it doesn't makes the program crash or loose data.