help! problem w/ Tiff to jpeg transfer?

[joellelee]

Hello!
I shot my first wedding a few weeks ago and while i think everything went well...whne I am now trasferring tiff to jpeg to email photos to bride and then to burn on Cd I am losing some major detail...My Tiffs are crystal clear and when I transfer to jpeg at 800x600 at high quality they look a little blurry...the bride is thrilled, but I notice it and it really bothers me! i know that this is inevitable in the transfer, but this much? i am worried about how they will print! Any thoughts would be fantastic!

[tnicol]

What's the resolution of the tiffs? Can you post a link to the tiff file that this jpg came from?

[Big K]

If you are sharpening your images before downsizing them this could be a contributing factor. It could also be caused by the steps you are taking to downsize the images. Can you provide more specific details on your workflow taking them from TIFF to JPEG as well as your sharpening workflow?

[Dennis_Hammer]

The quality is going to be worse with a JPG no matter how you handle it. TIFF's are a lossless file format. In other words they keep every single bit of information the camera saw when the photo was taken, if taken straight from a RAW file. JPG being a 'compressed' file format must by shear fact of compression discard information to be smaller. And JPG does discard an enormous amount of info over 90% I believe. And that doesn't even take into consideration that a TIFF can be 16 bit compared to all JPG's are 8 bit, also a huge loss of info, color and quality.

[jonwhite]

Why are you converting the files to 800 x 600 ?

Its sensible to supply client files in jpg format as its currently the most universally usable and printable file format but I don't understand why your feeling the need to reduce the files to 800 by 600 pixels, you are always gonna lose a lot of quality when you do that.

I supply client files in whatever standard resolution they were shot in.

[joellelee]

I always sharpen in raw and then save to tiff to edit more (no more sharpening at that point) and then I THOUGHT I had to convert to 800 X 600 for jpeg printing? I also converted to that for posting on the web eventhough I thought I was actually supposed to convert to 450 for posting....so, now my main question is.....what is a good pixel count for saving the files on a cd from a tiff to a jpeg to send to the client?

[jonwhite]

I think you need to do some reading up on this subject as you seem a little confused Joellelee

Generally sharpening is applied to images after they have been resized and not before.

Converting them to JPG is a good idea because they can be printed anywhere but if your converting them to 800 by 600 your not going to be able to print very big pictures without serious loss of quality,

Also 800 by 600 isn't a standard crop ratio so your gonna lose a portion from the long edge of every print, then when the client comes to print 6 by 4 or 9 by 6 or 12 by 8 prints its gonna work the other way and wont fit the crop ratio.

This probably seems very confusing as its not that easy to explain in text so I will explain what I do which will hopefully make more sense.

1. Convert RAW files to JPG's at 300DPI and full size, any cropped RAW's are cropped to the same ratio as the original RAW.

2. Create a separate set of JPG's resized to 800px at 72 DPI on the long edge keeping the crop ratio the same so the short edge ends up being 533px and the file sizes are small, this is what I use for displaying in my web gallery.

3. Print orders are cropped and sharpened to whatever size is ordered in inches at 300 DPI

4. The files I give to clients are full resolution JPG files as exported from Lightroom so they usually end up taking up 2 or 3 DVD's for between 600 and 1000 files as each JPG is between 10mb and 20mb.

[joellelee]

Yes! I need a good book that will help me with processing work...any recommendations?

I am giving the bride the printing rights....so, is there a good basic PPI I can set the jpegs at so she can make whatever sizes she wants....I have a headache...this is so confusing...more than I thought it would be. I have always just shot jpegs and printed thru shutterfly, cropped etc w/ no problem...
I am so new to this, thanx for your patience! I am a fast learner, i promise!
I did not do any crop work in the RAW....if I did any at all it was done in Jpeg thru my zoombrowser program w/ the canon kit...
I did just go back and convert the raw thru tiff at 300DPI and I can see an improvement...I then converted to jpeg at 1200 X 1800 and looked good thru an email i attached it to...would this be good for printing too? i need a basic pixel amount for each photo as i am giving the bride full rights to print, i will not be cropping/printing for her...

[joellelee]

also...no sharpening should be done in RAW?:oops:

[joellelee]

So....800 X 600 isn't right crop ratio...but 800 X 530 is?....Does that make a big difference?

[joellelee]

Sorry...to sound stupid...but, when you had said convert RAW to Jpeg at full size....would that be something like 1200 X 1800 pixels? In my Digital photo professional program I don't see any recommendations for what the full size would be..

[sctbiggs]

To keep it simple. Just don't do anything in RAW mode other than adjust for white balance and exposure. After that if you are using DPP, just convert them to jpgs. One at a time or use Batch Process so you can do them all at once and walk away. Don't change any settings or click on anthing else and it should convert them at whatever size and resolution they were taken at. Now sharpen, adjust curves, or whatever, in whatever post processing software you are using.

[joellelee]

OMG...I am losing my mind....I realize now i should have converted from raw to tiff at 300DPI and i did not do this..I went w/ whatever it was automatically set to....so, now I have converted all the raw to tiff and deleted the raw from my computer to open up memory...now, i need to go back and switch to 300DPI...can i do this w/out starting all over and downloading all of my raw files again off of my memory card?

[joellelee]

sctbiggs.....So, I should not change the dpi? It looks so much better when i change to 300 DPI form the pre set 220...what ou are saying to do is basically what I did and there is a loss of detail from the TIFF to the jpeg...

[sctbiggs]

220 preset? hmm... my images come out of camera at 350 I downsize to 300. What camera are you using? You may need to change camera settings so that you are shooting at it's highest resolution.

What size is coming out of your camera? In DPP and easy way to find this out is to open a RAW file, and convert it. Find the resize button and click on it. It's current size should pop up. What camera are you using? And are you sure you are in RAW mode and not sRAW or something other?

TIP... never delete the RAW files until you are absolutely sure you are done with them. Dont' want them on your computer? Invest in an external hard drive to store them on before you are finished with them.

No need to convert from RAW to TIFF. Unless you want super large image files or are doing something that you know ahead of time will be blown up quite large. Just convert RAW directly to JPG. After you adjust white balance and exposure.

[sctbiggs]

look here

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?p=3740438

[joellelee]

thanx for that link!
Well...I shot in RAW w/ the camera set on RAW...which i am assuming is the highest resolution...
Now, when i check the RAW its coming up 300dpi but thats probably because thats what i set it on now and it seems to be sticking/?