RAW Conversion

[oops]

Much has already been posted on this but I couldn't find an exact answer.

When converting from RAW and preparing for the PS touch up phase, is it better to convert to tiff first, do the PS work on the tiff files, and then convert the finished tiff to jpg for albums, e-mail, etc.?

I have noticed a file size loss in PS after even minimal changes to my jpg images of 50% or more. This can't be good for resolution. Thanks.

[dbookbinder]

If I shot in RAW (which I usually don't), I would convert to TIFF, save in PSD while I was working on it in Photoshop, then create a high-resolution JPEG copy for use with programs that require JPEG.

That having been said, if you are only going to do a bit of touching up, do a Save As, rather than a Save, and you should be prompted for the JPEG quality setting. (At least that's the way it works in Photoshop Elements, which is what I use, and I'd be surprised if Photoshop didn't let you specify a JPEG quality setting.) If you use Maximum quality (and therefore minimum compression), I doubt there's much image quality degradation.

- David

[Don Ellis]

No need to save in TIF unless you need that particular format. Save your original JPG as a Photoshop file, PSD. Work on it all you want and finally save a copy as JPG or TIF or whatever, depending on your use.

Another suggestion was made to save as TIF and then save in Photoshop as PSD. I don't see any benefit to this.

[oops]

Great tips, thanks!

I was surprised by the .psd file size; it is a close runner to .tif at 9 to 10 meg. The only reason I would not save to .psd is BreezeBrowser does not read the format at this time.

It seems my problem has been the way I was saving my images in PS. I was applying "auto levels" for instance and simply "x-ing" the image box rather than using the "save as" feature. In the first instance a 938kb image would save at 311kb. About a 66% loss!

By using "save as" and maximum quality the same .jpg saved at over 1meg. I am happy again!

[mikedavid]

If you plan on working on the image in Photoshop, I would save it in TIFF format, and work only from the TIFF format. When you have finished making all your changes, save the final copy in TIFF, and then save another copyof the final TIFF image as a JPG.

If you work in Photoshop from a JPG, periodically saving your changes as you edit, you introduce additional compression losses. TIFF is a lossless compression method. JPG introduces compression losses EVERY time you save the file.

I'm not sure exactly how much the picture degrades each time you save a picture as a JPG, but since TIFF files are just as easy to manipulate in Photoshop, I usually work with TIFF and avoid the risk.