Format of files on DVD for clients

[dragnfly1996]

Hi there, I have a question for you all. I have my first unhappy client. She is giving me list of reason's why she is unhappy and one reason is that "several" of her photographer friends told her that the DVD to the bride should be in TIFF format not JPG. Is this common practice for you? Have I been doing this wrong all along?

[RDKirk]

Hi there, I have a question for you all. I have my first unhappy client. She is giving me list of reason's why she is unhappy and one reason is that "several" of her photographer friends told her that the DVD to the bride should be in TIFF format not JPG. Is this common practice for you? Have I been doing this wrong all along?

Depends on the client. Many (not all) commercial clients require TIFF, although frankly that is a dated requirement. TIFF is the oldest "standard" format (although it comes in some non-standard flavors), so, for instance, a stock agency will require TIFF for its universality. Also, a TIFF will normally be delivered uncompressed and thus at highest quality...although this is also a dated presumption. TIFFs can be compressed, too. The presumption when someone specifies "TIFF" is that he's going to get the basic standard TIFF.

However, these days it's a pretty sorry printer who can't handle a high-quality JPEG, and with the many varieties of TIFF that exist, there is not much more reason to presume a JPEG will not be as good as necessary if you're dealing with photographers who understand the requirements...and if they don't understand the requirements, they can give you the wrong TIFF as easily as the wrong JPEG.

If the client intends to do further manipulation of the image (as, say, you're delivering images to an advertising agency), then TIFF is definitely the desired format.

When I deliver images to my commerical clients--small businesspeople in my case, not major industries--I deliver the images in both TIFF and JPEG format.

For a non-commercial client, JPEG is by far the way to go unless for some specific reason you're providing them an image for further pixel-level manipulation. A high-quality JPEG will deliver a print indistinguishable from a TIFF, yet will be a much smaller image file.