Any ideas?
PNG? You’ll actually get smaller file sizes than an LZW compressed TIF in most cases.
Keep PS6 on the machine for the purpose of saving the TIFFs. The space saving is not a lot between uncompressed and LZW though – only about 25%.
The space saving is not a lot between uncompressed and LZW though – only about 25%.
Depends on the image content. Line copy TIFF will compress over 95%! But you’re right that average for RGB is probably about that.
Mac
Useful bit of info Mac. I was only thinking of RGB TIFFs.
Any ideas?
Don’t compress the TIFFs. Many applications have issues with compressed TIFFs, not just Microsoft apps.
Robert’s correct. It would be best if you just forget altogether that LZW compression even exists. Don’t use it…the space savings isn’t worth the problems it can cause.
MarkATS is right about the PNG format. MS apps love PNG, even recognizing transparency. Medium-resolution PNG’s, (150-200ppi) look great on-screen and when printed from MS Office apps, and are very efficient in terms of byte-economy.
The strange thing is, that some Pictures created in PS cs will load in MS Word 2000 some not! even if there is the LZW compression set on.
PS CS creates a little bit smaller TIF files than PS6 with LZW sometimes… but the MS applications load the PS6 LZW compressed Tifs without a problem. Why is there a Problem with PS CS? The file size for a file example is: LZW compressed 438KB and uncompressed 2324KB so that file size in a network really matters!
greets
kida
MS apps love PNG
except IE.
Also report this to Microsoft so they can fix their TIFF code.
We have no idea why they would have problems with files from CS (or any version of Photoshop).
I use version 7, and use LZW compressed Tiffs in MS applications daily. From MS Publisher (shadddup!) to powerpoint, and word. Alpha channels wreak havoc on what is displayed in MS Apps so you might want to make sure the alpha channel is removed before saving.
Peace,
Tony
Tony,
Are you patched to version 7.0.1? There was a problem with LZW TIFs saved from PS 7.0.
Bob
On my machine LZW compression is important. Typical Canon EOS 300D CRW images are 75-110% bigger if saved as uncompressed TIFs as opposed to LZW TIFs. The hard drive becomes effectively twice as big, or half as small. I suspect there are sum legalities involved with LZW since PictureCode’s Noise Ninja won’t load or save LZW for copywrite reasons.
Medium-resolution PNG’s, (150-200ppi) look great on-screen
Just a clarification. Resolution is ignored on-screen.
Robert,
Are you patched to version 7.0.1?
Yessir. I rely on Tiffs in MS PUB (shaaddup!). Always LZW compressed. <shrug>
I have about 3000 images scanned from 35mm slides. They are all stored as TIFFs with LZW compression. The compression reduces file sizes from 30MB to about 20, typically.
I do not use these files in other applications. These are my archive files. I convert to PSD or JPEG as required for other uses.
FWIW….
Bert
You know, it’s funny. For as long as Tiff has been around, and as much as it is a preferred cross platform, archival format, you’d think you’d get universal support of all of its features for just about every app. Odd.
As far as LZW compression is concerned: I’ve seen 175mb (uncompressed) files when saved with LZW, be as small as 2.5mb.
This is by far not going to be your typical results from LZW, but depending on image content, LZW could very well much be your friend.
Someone earlier mentioned 25% reduction as a typical result. My experience would say that’s about right, maybe a little low.
Bert
It depends on the type of image. Apparently line art will compress much more than photos.
Line art will generally compress 90+%!
Since there are only 2 values to map, black or white.
In general, in RGB images, the fewer the colors the more the compression. 8×10 @ 300ppi, filled with blue, saved as normal TIFF: 21MB Same saved as LZW TIFF: 447KB !
Mac
Tony – you would think so…
But everyone seems to find new and interesting ways to mess it up. And a lot of the readers aren’t very robust about small errors (like writing one byte too many ;-).
There’s even an open source library to read and write TIFF, with pretty good support. But do people use it, or compare results against it? Noooooooo.
Peggy–I’m having the same problem. I have Office 2002 with latest upgrade on Windows XP with SP 1. I have 1 GB of RAM, and my processor speed is 3 GHz. I installed my Photoshop CS with administrator privileges, though I don’t know why that would help with Photoshop changing the LZW compression from Photoshop 6 to CS. Have you solved your problem? Sue Carlson
