=TIFs–>LZW-TIFs: stock photography drawbacks?=

JG
Posted By
Jeff_Greenberg
May 10, 2004
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223
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Am considering converting all my uncompressed TIFs to LZW-TIFs in order to store more photos per external hard drive. Anyone doing this? LZW novice questions & concerns: are there drawbacks, permanent loss of photo information, reduction in quality when converting TIF–>LZW-TIF? Are older programs unable to open LZW-TIFs? Can an LZW-TIF be converted back to its original TIF condition or is it permanently altered? Is it correct that typically I will free up 25% memory by converting TIF–>LZW-TIF? Comments & advice appreciated. (my TIFs generated from slide scans or RAWs, not from JPGs) Regards, JG.
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Mac_McDougald
May 10, 2004
LZW is non lossy. Does not change original pixel content at all.

Different pix will compresses to different degrees, depends on how much expanse of same color is in original.
25-35% is probably "normal".
A lineart TIF will compress about 98%!

Yes, some older program can have problems opening, but would think we’re talking >5 year old proggies, or non-mainstream ones.

As a side, you’d think that LZW would be a totally consistent algorithm, regardless of what program made them, right?
Nope. Make one in PS, then make same one in IrfanView.
For all I know, you may get different results in different versions of PS.

But, with HD space so cheap, why bother?
The time to do it isn’t worth it, IMNSHO.

Mac
JG
John_Gregson
May 10, 2004
The only (minor) drawback I’ve experienced on a PhotoshopCS on a WindowsXP system is that the Icons in Explorer Thumbnail view will only show one of the layers if you save with layers. But this may be attributable to using the workaround to showing thumbnails by using the Photoshop 7.0 dll as the feature was dropped with CS because of WindowsXP problems. If I’m working with layers, I usually save as PSD.
H
Ho
May 10, 2004
I stopped using compressed TIFs when 2 of my files became corrupt and could not be opened. This may or may not be an isolated/unusual event, but I am not willing to gamble. Now I use WinRar to compress my work. It saves a recovery record with each archive which I have not had to resort to; 4 years and counting, zero problems.

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