Saving picture

I shoot all my pictures in raw. I was wondering, after I get through processing, is it better to save them jpeg or Tiff. I see people save them both ways. I was wondering which is best. Thanks.

I just save the Raw. Anything I want can be made from it any time I want.

rral22 wrote in post #14205535
I just save the Raw. Anything I want can be made from it any time I want.

This. Although I do make full resolution, low compression JPGs with full exif intact of my favorites in case some catastrophe destroyed my Lightroom database or my ability to view my raw files.

I only save jpeg when it is the final image. Keeping raw or tiff until all edits are made is the best thing to do. Everytime you edit/save a jpeg you loose quality.

Umm, hang on -- those who say "just save the Raw" are not making sense unless you are using the Canon software Digital Photo Professional (DPP). It is the only software that "saves the Raw". But when it does this it is saving editing metadata to the Raw "header" -- it doesn't actually save changed Raw data.

As long as that is understood, then you can do a Save in DPP without worry.

However, if you are not using DPP you should be aware that you do not "save" a Raw file!

But for what the OP asks, we need to specify: when you have edited a Raw file and then want to create an "image" file for a specific purpose, such as posting on the Web, doing a print, or maybe opoening a file in Photoshop or another editor, you have different options depending on what you are doing.

For instance, for the Web you want a jpeg that has been resized for viewing, unless you are using a for-pay site and you want to store larger jpegs.

For editing, it is typically good to use a tiff or, if editing in Photoshop, a psd file could be used if your Raw software supports it. For most "serious" editing these formats are better than a jpeg, since jpegs get compressed when you save them, meaning that they lose some data that you could later regret losing.

As to tiffs/psd files, you then need to decide whether to convert/save/export them using 8 bits-per-channel or 16 bits-per-channel. This can be a tough choice: 8-bit images have also been "compressed", but give you files that haven't undergone the extra "jpeg compression", and also have file sizes that are quite "manageable". But a 16-bit image is uncompressed; however they typically produce huge files!

If you want to produce a file for printing, either uploading to a lab or taking to a local service, then jpeg will almost always be preferred, although if the printer accepts a tiff, you could give that a try. Typically, you will want to use a High Quality setting on the jpeg, and not resize it to a smaller size.

Oh, and when you are working with Raw, for most purposes it is good to set your Raw converter to use the sRGB color space when saving to a jpeg/tiff/psd file. This is a "universal" color space that "plays well" with the wide variety of devices and software used for viewing and printing your images.

Thanks to all lots of help
Dale

Lightroom and ACR "save the raw" development settings in a sidecar XMP file (or are one click away from doing so). DPP is the only software which writes it into the Raw file.

And even then I would 'save the raw', even if I could never recover the processing.

Which is why, like another poster mentioned I also save everything as a decent quality .jpeg.

But each does have an advantages and some disadvantages;

RAW: original data and quite compressed (not large files compared with 16-bit TIFF), may be able to re-use settings by saving XMP, but maybe not in 10years time.

JPEG: highly compressed (8-bit even at 100%) and thus relatively small, but good enough for just about anything except major changes to the image.

TIFF: retain processed raw file in full 16-bit. Can be sure you won't loose the processing steps from the raw file and can certainly do quite major adjustments without IQ suffering. However, you can't undo/redo NR, sharpening or proper white balance and files are very large.

For about ~70% of my shots I save the raw with XMP and a .jpeg compressed at 92%; the others I just save as .jpeg (95%+) and delete the raw. All full resolution. I do sometimes save intermediate files as TIFF if I have done a lot of processing to obtain them that I can't easily recreate (say healing and cloning). most of this is at 8-bit though becasue I can't bring myself to by PS instead of a new lens and use Gimp instead. How much you save as 16-bit TIFFs totally depends on your workflow, software and how much PP you do.

If I really felt like I had infinite disk space I'd save all raws and everything processed at 16-bit TIFF, so how much you deviate from that really depends (IMO) on how cheap you think disk space is compared to how much you shoot. I can see the argument that says just buy 4Tb of disk each year, it's still cheaper than film, but I prefer a compromise.

Overall though my mantra is if in doubt save it and if you've put a decent amount of work into PP that you might lose in the future, save it as 16-bit TIFF (if you can). Disk space really is relatively cheap and should be considered as part of the price of taking digital photos (despite someone on the form trying to claim $150 for 2Tb of disk was a significant cost - must be young is all I can say to that).