I have been saving photo files as Tiff files in order to maintain Pixel integrity. This causes 7 and CS to bog a bit when loading to the browser. Once they load once they seem OK but is it just as good to use JPG 2000. I have just gone digital and I am worried that as my files grow as TIFF they will be unmanageable. What is the collective wisdom please?
I have (I think) followed the scratchdisk/paging setting instructions properly.
I am using digital photo files as a source and printing them to and Epson 2200. My system is a new Dell 4600 3 GigHtz with 512 Ram and two 100+gig HDD’s
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JP2k is a wonderful format that has not gained wide acceptance. I use it for some of my archiving now and, if it becomes more popular, I will use it for everything. I also save PSD files of my valuable images for the simple reason that they are just as good as TIFFs (better, as far as PS is concerned) and they also have a modicum of built-in compression so the files are smaller.
If you are not constrained by some other software, there is no logical reason to use any format other than PSD, is there? File size is not really an issue. Disk space is cheap and once the image is loaded into PS, the memory usage has nothing to do with what the initial format was.
Now that I think it through PSD is the right format since I plan to stay with Photoshop CS for as many "editing" functions as possible. I just wish the Nikon D70 Raw was posted and the workflow/file tagging was more user friendly. Then I wouldn’t need any other photo management program.
Why bother with TIFF? Unless you have sharp text in the composition (unlikely in a photo, methinks !?!) I’ve never seen a single pixel different with a JPEG’s off a good camera. All blurriness and so on is to do with the lens, your very own chosen settings, and the camera internals.
I bet that applies to all but the very ‘BEST-est’ photography out there, and that type of photographer doesn’t show up on forums too much…
I know nothing about jpg2000. I do know that a regular jpg, even at the highest setting, is not as good as an uncompressed tif. I dont think many people would say otherwise. Actually Ive never heard anyone say this before now. It certainly isnt the way to go if you need to do a number of saves.
Well… here’s why I said JPEGs are as good as TIFFs.
I took a 3.5megapixel photo. I converted it to Jpeg at 100%. I compared the two versions side by side, pixel by pixel and from various zooms. I saw no difference. I did not compare using number values, just visually.
Then (just now) I did another similar test on a sparkling bright photo, using number values. I found that on about half the pixels, there were differences of ‘1’ in 1 of the R, G and B values (which of course go from 0 to 255). In some cases there were differences of 1 in all 3 values.
So whether those "1" differences amount to anything significant is open to question I suppose.
PS I don’t think I deserve the contempt I’m feeling from you here. Many rules you see in books, schools and print shops are crying out for revision.
If Thomas needs to save a layered file – there’s only three choices, and each one has it’s advantages and disadvantages.
PSD, Tiff, and PDF are the only three formats that save layers. Photoshop is one of the few programs that will actually read a PSD file.
Tiff and PDF are somewhat standard formats and are recognized by 99% of other software, even layered files. The only thing that other software see is the flattened composite of the file. So with these two formats there is more universitality (is that word?).
PDF’s can get kludgy when dealing with less than perfect RIP systems (as I’ve found the hard way).
So my suggestion, and this is completely subjective to the needs of Thomas, would be Layered Tiff because it is seen by most other software and there is no conversion needed. Also with LZW compression, I have seen on average some slight file size advantage over native PSD.
But those are minor factors, so PSD may very well be the best bet.
The magazines I send stuff off to give me pdf job options. Some of these have images ‘set’ to JPEG at maximum. They obviously think they don’t lose much by using JPEG. But they sure save a lot in FTP hassles!
The other day I made a sign that came out at over 100mb. I couldn’t even FTP it! I made a pdf with jpeg maximum option. The sign was fine, and the file was down at 8 mb or something.
I still think there’s very very little lost in a JPEG converted at 100%. Lots of great great photos are jpegs. Browsethrough Photosearch.com. From what I can see you get jpegs from them, not TIFFs.
No contempt intended. You are allowed to have your opinion. Would like to point out that there may be a difference between a smaller photo published in a magazine and a 16×20 photograph. I cant take chances with customer portraits. If jpgs serve you well that is fine. I simply disagree with the statement that jpgs are as good as tiffs.
"you can convert PSD for example to TIFF with no loss in data"
yes – but with reservations.
PSD has it’s own native lossless compression, but Tiff has a few compression options, one of which is JPEG compression…in a Tiff. So if you save Tiff/JPEG compression, you really are no better off than saving JPEG exept you can have layers.
ZIP and LZW compression are loseless, so anything goes. But ZIP is not widely accepted, and can really throw a wrench in the works with some software/hardware.
LZW has been around long enough that 99.9% of those issues have been resolved with just about everything out there.
