Re: TIFF vs. PSD formats

omen wrote:

On Wed, 17 Sep 2003 20:44:46 GMT, "UCLA Fan"
wrote:

I understand that manipulating JPEG and than resaving causes a loss of pixels. My Camera does have a RAW mode but I shoot JPEG only. My question is, is there a difference in converting my files to TIFF vs. PSD before editing occurs? Does one provide a better format to work with or a higher quality image.

I think the original question was "pre-edit" saves. Here’s my advice: Shoot only in RAW. Save in RAW for archive. If you don’t have a burner, get one ASAP. Buy a buttload of CD-Rs and archive everything you want to save from your camera to RAW on the CD-Rs. Cost is no longer a factor with CD-R prices and needless to say because of this, storage space isn’t either. goodluck, Ken

Here are two things to consider:

1. Never, ever shoot in JPEG. You lose quality, not pixels. The pixel resolution remains the same, but the informational content has been reduced and degraded. You can convert these images into TIFF or PSD and thus avoid further degradation, but you can never recreate the quality that was lost in the first JPEG compression. So, never scan or capture your originals in JPEG.

2. Under no circumstances should we save the RAW’s only as your archive files. The RAW files are in a proprietary format, which means that you are dependent on a particular software program in order to open and convert them in the future. You have no guarantee that you will have access to that program or that it will be available in the future. The same holds true for PSD, because it requires Photoshop. Therefore you have to convert the RAW’s into TIFF, and store both the RAW’s and the TIFF’s on CD. This way, you have certainty that you will be able to preserve your precious files for the future, because TIFF is an open standard which will be redable and editable in future software programs.

Per Inge Oestmoen, Norway
http://www.efn.no/

The choice of Graphic File Formats needs to be considered in context; capture, manipulation, and storage.

For personal use – High quality JPEG capture, PSD/TIFF manipulation/storage is all you need.

For professional use – RAW, TIFF, JPEG in that order. See discussion below.

Your choice of tools and end-use will affect your choice of best format. Scientific analysis may require TIFF at the highest resolution. Web site images require JPEG/BMP/PNG.
Publications usually require 300dpi TIFF at finished print size. Etc….

In depth discussion… <<<<<

Capture –

JPEG: Lossy, Compressed. Image captures of naturally occurring elements saved as low compression, high quality JPEG files are indistinguishable from the same image saved in any other format.
Q = Once you capture an image at a specific compression setting, you can never recover the data lost in the compression process.

TIFF: Lossless, usually uncompressed. Image data file with embedded tags. The tags are useful for specialized applications. EXIF data is the modern implementation of TIFF tags.
Q = Limited only by hardware and camera settings.

RAW: Lossless, uncompressed, proprietary. This is indeed the ‘raw’ CCD pixel data. Sometimes referred to as a digital negative. It has no value until post-processed into image data. Low cost cameras use a standard firmware program to convert RAW data to JPEG image files. High cost cameras use very sophisticated programs developed in-house to take advantage of specific lens/CCD/hardware characteristics to generate JPEG and TIFF files. Go here for PSCS write up
http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/cameraraw.html
Q = Zero. This is CCD data, not image data. The quality is determined in the conversion of RAW data to image data.

Manipulation –

JPEG: If handled intelligently, can be edited many times with no loss of perceived quality. Generally, if you make an edit to a small area, only that area is ‘recompressed’. The JPEG algorithm is optimized for human vision. At low compression, high quality settings, the is no perceived difference in quality when compared to an alternate format.
Q = Variable, from very good to very bad. Determined by user settings and image content.

TIFF: Lossless file format. Basically an X,Y bit bucket that doesn’t change image quality.
Q = No change. File format doesn’t affect quality.

RAW: N/A – RAW data is not usable. Must be converted for manipulation. Q = Determined by conversion software.

Hope this helps,

Mr3

"pioe[rmv]" <"pioe[rmv]"@coldsiberia.org> wrote in message

omen wrote:

On Wed, 17 Sep 2003 20:44:46 GMT, "UCLA Fan"
wrote:

I understand that manipulating JPEG and than resaving causes a loss of pixels. My Camera does have a RAW mode but I shoot JPEG only. My

question

is, is there a difference in converting my files to TIFF vs. PSD before editing occurs? Does one provide a better format to work with or a

higher

quality image.

I think the original question was "pre-edit" saves. Here’s my advice: Shoot only in RAW. Save in RAW for archive. If you don’t have a burner, get one ASAP. Buy a buttload of CD-Rs and archive everything you want to save from your camera to RAW on the CD-Rs. Cost is no longer a factor with CD-R prices and needless to say because of this, storage space isn’t either. goodluck, Ken

Here are two things to consider:

1. Never, ever shoot in JPEG. You lose quality, not pixels. The pixel resolution remains the same, but the informational content has been reduced and degraded. You can convert these images into TIFF or PSD and thus avoid further degradation, but you can never recreate the quality that was lost in the first JPEG compression. So, never scan or capture your originals in JPEG.

2. Under no circumstances should we save the RAW’s only as your archive files. The RAW files are in a proprietary format, which means that you are dependent on a particular software program in order to open and convert them in the future. You have no guarantee that you will have access to that program or that it will be available in the future. The same holds true for PSD, because it requires Photoshop. Therefore you have to convert the RAW’s into TIFF, and store both the RAW’s and the TIFF’s on CD. This way, you have certainty that you will be able to preserve your precious files for the future, because TIFF is an open standard which will be redable and editable in future software programs.

Per Inge Oestmoen, Norway
http://www.efn.no/

On Wed, 12 Nov 2003 06:17:14 GMT, omen wrote:

On Wed, 17 Sep 2003 20:44:46 GMT, "UCLA Fan"
wrote:

I understand that manipulating JPEG and than resaving causes a loss of pixels. My Camera does have a RAW mode but I shoot JPEG only. My question is, is there a difference in converting my files to TIFF vs. PSD before editing occurs? Does one provide a better format to work with or a higher quality image.

TIA
Ken

I think the original question was "pre-edit" saves. Here’s my advice: Shoot only in RAW. Save in RAW for archive. If you don’t have a burner, get one ASAP. Buy a buttload of CD-Rs and archive everything you want to save from your camera to RAW on the CD-Rs. Cost is no longer a factor with CD-R prices and needless to say because of this, storage space isn’t either. goodluck, Ken

Don’t save i n RAW. Save in a non-propriety, lossless format. And if you’ve a lot of images consider DVD or an external hard drive. Also, if you have a lot of images get yourself an image database like Thumbsplus otherwise you’ll never have any idea what is saved where. Finally, if that is also the case, make sure that you annotate and save frequently because once you get a backlog you’ll spend more time archiving than you will shooting.

—

Hecate

veni, vidi, relinqui

As a recent proud owner of Sony DSC-V1 (5 mp), The fine setting in jpeg mode provides more than enough quality and detail. Even with a 256 meg Mem stick, I’d have to argue against saving 16 meg tiff’s that take much longer to write to a card over a 2 meg jpeg that saves fast, plus having way more storage space on the card.

The difference is practically indiscernable – and how about the gamut limitations of printing anyway?

The world is beginning to be flooded with creative content. I can’t believe – at the end of the day – that an image consumer will care about the difference between a tiff and jpeg if the image is "good" – as subjective as that is… 🙂

Nobody is going to have time to scrutinize anything, there will soon be so much to see and try to absorb.

Far more "kodak moments" will be lost worrying about file formats instead of capturing something emotive and saleable as a jpeg. My approach is to shoot lots, then sort through them later.

JD

1. Never, ever shoot in JPEG. You lose quality, not pixels. The pixel resolution remains the same, but the informational content has been reduced and degraded. You can convert these images into TIFF or PSD and thus avoid further degradation, but you can never recreate the quality that was lost in the first JPEG compression. So, never scan or capture your originals in JPEG.

Hecate wrote:

On Wed, 12 Nov 2003 06:17:14 GMT, omen wrote:

On Wed, 17 Sep 2003 20:44:46 GMT, "UCLA Fan"
wrote:

I understand that manipulating JPEG and than resaving causes a loss of pixels. My Camera does have a RAW mode but I shoot JPEG only. My question is, is there a difference in converting my files to TIFF vs. PSD before editing occurs? Does one provide a better format to work with or a higher quality image.

TIA
Ken

I think the original question was "pre-edit" saves. Here’s my advice: Shoot only in RAW. Save in RAW for archive. If you don’t have a burner, get one ASAP. Buy a buttload of CD-Rs and archive everything you want to save from your camera to RAW on the CD-Rs. Cost is no longer a factor with CD-R prices and needless to say because of this, storage space isn’t either. goodluck, Ken

Don’t save i n RAW. Save in a non-propriety, lossless format. And if you’ve a lot of images consider DVD or an external hard drive. Also, if you have a lot of images get yourself an image database like Thumbsplus otherwise you’ll never have any idea what is saved where. Finally, if that is also the case, make sure that you annotate and save frequently because once you get a backlog you’ll spend more time archiving than you will shooting.

Speaking mainly to Ken (forgive my piggybacking) On my ancient Nikon the lossless mode is a TIFF file. At full size they run about 9 megabytes each. That means that I can get about 75 of them on a CD.

As of now I’ve got about 4000 shots. That would be 53 CDs for storing the originals.

Keeping an up-to-date index file so that I could find a
desired shot in less than an hour would itself be a problem.

I’m not a professional.

Do we really think that I should go this route toward saving my photos?

What I actually do is save 1024×768 images at the highest quality (least compression) JPEG the camera will supply. That knocks the needed storage down to something less than 400,000 bytes give or take. That’s a rather large saving in space. I put the "originals" on CD as they come out of the camera with no alterations. The 4000 shots currently fill less than 3 CDs.

It is a compromise but one that works for me and, I suspect, many others.

—- Paul J. Gans

On Fri, 14 Nov 2003 03:00:58 +0000 (UTC), Paul J Gans
wrote:

Don’t save i n RAW. Save in a non-propriety, lossless format. And if you’ve a lot of images consider DVD or an external hard drive. Also, if you have a lot of images get yourself an image database like Thumbsplus otherwise you’ll never have any idea what is saved where. Finally, if that is also the case, make sure that you annotate and save frequently because once you get a backlog you’ll spend more time archiving than you will shooting.

Speaking mainly to Ken (forgive my piggybacking) On my ancient Nikon the lossless mode is a TIFF file. At full size they run about 9 megabytes each. That means that I can get about 75 of them on a CD.

As of now I’ve got about 4000 shots. That would be 53 CDs for storing the originals.

Keeping an up-to-date index file so that I could find a
desired shot in less than an hour would itself be a problem.
I’m not a professional.

Do we really think that I should go this route toward saving my photos?

What I actually do is save 1024×768 images at the highest quality (least compression) JPEG the camera will supply. That knocks the needed storage down to something less than 400,000 bytes give or take. That’s a rather large saving in space. I put the "originals" on CD as they come out of the camera with no alterations. The 4000 shots currently fill less than 3 CDs.

I can understand your space problem. However, have you tried compressed Tiff with LZW compression? That format is lossless as well and preserves the information in case you want to do anything with your images later. remembe4, once you’ve lost the information you can never get it back.

It is a compromise but one that works for me and, I suspect, many others.

And is probably OK if you never want to print larger than say, 10×8 and don’t want to manipulate the files beforehand.

—

Hecate

veni, vidi, relinqui

Hecate wrote:

On Fri, 14 Nov 2003 03:00:58 +0000 (UTC), Paul J Gans
wrote:

Don’t save i n RAW. Save in a non-propriety, lossless format. And if you’ve a lot of images consider DVD or an external hard drive. Also, if you have a lot of images get yourself an image database like Thumbsplus otherwise you’ll never have any idea what is saved where. Finally, if that is also the case, make sure that you annotate and save frequently because once you get a backlog you’ll spend more time archiving than you will shooting.

Speaking mainly to Ken (forgive my piggybacking) On my ancient Nikon the lossless mode is a TIFF file. At full size they run about 9 megabytes each. That means that I can get about 75 of them on a CD.

As of now I’ve got about 4000 shots. That would be 53 CDs for storing the originals.

Keeping an up-to-date index file so that I could find a
desired shot in less than an hour would itself be a problem.
I’m not a professional.

Do we really think that I should go this route toward saving my photos?

What I actually do is save 1024×768 images at the highest quality (least compression) JPEG the camera will supply. That knocks the needed storage down to something less than 400,000 bytes give or take. That’s a rather large saving in space. I put the "originals" on CD as they come out of the camera with no alterations. The 4000 shots currently fill less than 3 CDs.

I can understand your space problem. However, have you tried compressed Tiff with LZW compression? That format is lossless as well and preserves the information in case you want to do anything with your images later. remembe4, once you’ve lost the information you can never get it back.

Of course. I understand that. My few experiments with LZW compression on TIFFS was not that happy in terms of size. Further, I worry about being able to read formats 10 years from now.

It is a compromise but one that works for me and, I suspect, many others.

And is probably OK if you never want to print larger than say, 10×8 and don’t want to manipulate the files beforehand.

8×10 would be fine. And it depends on the image, of course.

I suspect that with my next camera I’m going to have to store larger images (or it makes little sense to move to more pixels). But by then I’ll be able to burn the images into DVDs.

—- Paul J. Gans