what file to process for printing in cs

[RJCONKLIN]

i was just wondering, what is the best file to process and print in photoshop cs. does it make any difference?

here is what i mean. here is three different scenarios.

1. camera raw to file viewer convert to tiff process and print in cs.

2. camera raw to file viewer do not convert process and print in cs.

3. camera raw to cs process and print in cs.

the tiff file seems to be 4x larger. does it contain more information?

[scottbergerphoto]

I 'm not sure I follow your question. Raw files must be converted to be edited, printed, etc. They are just numbers. They have to be interpreted by the conversion engine. When you look at a thumbnail of a Raw file in the file viewer, you are looking not at the raw file but the .thm file that is recorded at the same time as the Raw file. The Tiff file is so much larger because it has the translation of the raw numbers(white balance, contrast, saturation, color space). There are a number of different Raw converters with their respective fans: C1, BreezeBrowser, PS CS, etc.
Scott

[RJCONKLIN]

maybe the way i should put it is: is there any advantage to using a tiff file that has been converted in file viewer then used in photoshop where all adjustments are made verses using a raw file converted in photoshop, making all the adjustments then becoming a psd file.

the reason i ask is because there seems to be much more information in a tiff file. 36mb tiff vs 6-9mb psd.

[iwatkins]

36Mb TIFF comes out at around 6-9Mb is you use compression.

A PSD is basically a compressed TIFF anyway.

So, no, no advantage.

Cheers

Ian

[Scottes]

36Mb TIFF comes out at around 6-9Mb is you use compression.

Not necessarily! I just had a few pictures where I instinctively compressed the TIFF and they went from 36Meg to 48meg. Higher ISO images will have more noise, so less pixels in a row that are the same exact color. Both LZW and ZIP use run-lengths of patterns in order to compress - if there are no patterns, then the image will "compress" to a larger size.

[John_T]

I go RAW > TIFF > buy more HDs. :D

Why mess around?

[iwatkins]

36Mb TIFF comes out at around 6-9Mb is you use compression.

Not necessarily! I just had a few pictures where I instinctively compressed the TIFF and they went from 36Meg to 48meg. Higher ISO images will have more noise, so less pixels in a row that are the same exact color. Both LZW and ZIP use run-lengths of patterns in order to compress - if there are no patterns, then the image will "compress" to a larger size.

Wow, really ?

You know, I never actually look to see the file sizes afterwards. But the ones I have looked at have always been comparable in size to the PSDs.

Must keep an eye on that, that is maybe where my hard disk has gone :)

Cheers

Ian

[Scottes]

I just did a quick test, 1000x1000 file, and did a gradiated fill from corner to corner. 5.8 meg TIFF. Saved it LZW and 7.9 meg.

I think that both ZIP and LZW do compression on a row basis, whereas JPG will look at surrounding pixels and lose info. A corner-to-corner gradiated fill will not have many pixels in a row of the same color. But yet both ZIP and LZW still have to build lookup tables. So these tables simply take more space, because no table is used more than once.

JPG will look at surrounding pixels and change ones that are similar, then it will build lookup tables. Because it's doing color shifts it loses info, but because it's making pixels more similar it gets to use lookup tables more than once.

It's like the JPG will look at an area and build a table for it. The next area is quite similar - but not exact - so the JPG will toss that exact info out and just use that table again.


Another test at 8 bit gradiated corner-to-corner was 3.9 meg TIFF, 162KB JPG (quality 12). That's 24:1 compression. Yet the TIFF had only 396 unique colors, while the JPG had 634. Even with more colors the JPG compressed better because each table gets used a number of times.

[RJCONKLIN]

of all the different files converted from raw, which will give you the the best potential picture after post processing?

[Scottes]

of all the different files converted from raw, which will give you the the best potential picture after post processing?

With File Viewer converting to a 16-bit TIFF will give the best quality. With PS CS - whether you converted with it or not - you can save as TIFF or PSD. PSD is better if you use layers and channels masks and such, and may be necessary for some of this anyway. But if you just do some edits and corrections without layers, then you can just save over that TIFF.

There's no quality difference between TIFF or PSD, it's a matter of whether or not you need to save in PSD to keep layers and such.

[RJCONKLIN]

that answers my questions. thanks to all of you.