Information Loss with Tiff – LZW-ZIP compression??

PP
Posted By
Paul_Prachun
Sep 13, 2008
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321
Replies
5
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Closed
In order to save hard-drive disk space I want/need to start compressing my Photoshop files. The Tiff-LZW or Tiff-ZIP compressions seems like a great lossless format alternative with apparent significant compression. Is anyone aware whether there is truly no loss of file information with these formats, or does some minimal degradation occur? Any thoughts on JPEG2000 lossless compression?
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dave_milbut
Sep 13, 2008
Is anyone aware whether there is truly no loss of file information with these formats

loss-less compression means "no loss". 🙂
MD
Michael_D_Sullivan
Sep 13, 2008
Be aware that LZW compression typically won’t save space if the file is a photographic image at 16 bits per channel, and may even increase the file size. 8 bpc photos compress well, though. Not sure about ZIP compression.
GH
Gernot_Hoffmann
Sep 13, 2008
Michael,

the compression ratio for 24 bit RGB TIFF images by ZIP
isn’t impressive – about 2..3 according to older tests.
An actual test for a color portrait with a larger uniform background delivers ratio 4.

IMO, all flavours of TIFF are correctly handled by Adobe programs, but for the sake of clarity I’m saving TIFFs
(with or without layers) uncompressed, and the compression is applied if necessary for PDFs (InDesign).

Best regards –Gernot Hoffmann
TT
Toby_Thain
Sep 14, 2008
all flavours of TIFF are correctly handled by Adobe programs

Photoshop only handles a subset of TIFF codecs.
MD
Michael_D_Sullivan
Sep 15, 2008
I seem to recall that it doesn’t open TIFF files with PackBits compression.

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