Help me understand TIFF's

[countfrank]

Hi everyone,

I'm about 8 months into this digital thing and struggling to understand why I should convert my photos to TIFF format. Per your advice I started shooting RAW several months ago and use Capture One for editing and conversion. Roger Cavanagh's workflow has helped me a ton (http://www.rogercavanagh.com/helpinfo/24_workflow_c1.htm)

Anyway, currently I do little post editing outside of Capture One, but will use Photoshop for some simple things such as cropping/resizing. Right now I'm converting my RAW's into JPG & TIFF. I then either print the pics or post to the web, which I use JPG for. I guess I'm not sure why I need to convert to TIFF and use up all of the hard drive space when I'm keeping the original RAW pics anyway.

Any advice/help/clarification/etc... would be appreciated.

Thanks

PS. Shooting in RAW is the only way to go. It's amazing how much more you can get out of your pictures through editing you couldn't otherwise get shooting JPG.

[defordphoto]

Simple answer: TIFF is a non compressed format. You can edit the photo 57 times and there is no file degradation at all.

The reason many of us also keep our converted TIFF's is so that we always have that coverted file available and therefore do not have to reconvert it everytime we need access to that photo.

HD space is very, very cheap right now. It's worth it to have a 250gig drive or two around for your photos.

[Scottes]

I guess I'm not sure why I need to convert to TIFF and use up all of the hard drive space when I'm keeping the original RAW pics anyway.

If you're worried about disk space, and not worried about 16-bit convert the TIFF to 8-bit and save as PNG. PNG does a lossless compression. It took a 19.3 meg 8-bit TIFF and brought it to 7.7 meg.

Always save the RAW - preferably to CD and off the system - since you may want to change something [drastic] someday. Save the completed, developed TIFF - it's your best bet for printing and edits - on the system, or perhaps on a different CD if you think you're done with it.

[CyberDyneSystems]

The trouble with PNG is it doesn't have the widespread support of the .jpg and .tif

The other option is that if you work in RAW to start and then save as a jpeg in lowest compression (ei: highest quality,.. in PS that is 12) then you will allways have the RAW file to fall back on,. and just save to jpeg after all the editing is done. This way you don't have to save a 6 meg RAW and a 12-16MB tiff...

Teh downside of course is that the jpeg will indeed mean losing info/quality.

[Roger_Cavanagh]

Frank,

Converting to TIFF files will give you the best quality image for editing in Photoshop. I assume that you save edited files as PSD, so there is no need to keep the converted TIFFs once you have created the PSD file.

I never bother to save the converted TIFFs, I just reconvert, if I want to use the image again. Not only does this save space, but also it avoids the hassle of having to archive another set of images, and most of all because the raw converters may have improved in the mean time. So when I reconvert I get the benefit of any improvements.

For web images, if you don't expect (as you say) to do more than crop and downsize, I'd convert directly to 8-bit JPGs in sRGB. The downsizing will hide any small loss of quality that you might experience. But remember not to edit and save JPGs until you get to final output.

For images you plan to print, I'd always start with 16-bit TIFF.

Happy New Year,

[countfrank]

Thanks everyone... I have a much better understanding now.

Happy New Year !!!!