Photomatix to tiff to Photoshop to jpg should I save the altered tiff

I have been experimenting with taking a series of 5 raw photographs with different exposures on my Olympus E-P5, that I then merge in Photomatix Pro, exporting full size tiff 16-bit files. I then open those tiff files in CC Photoshop where I then use the Adaptive Wide Angle Filter to correct the perspective by de-selecting fisheye, and drawing lines to straighten the photographs.

Then I save the Photoshop changes as a new jpg file, and ... don't save the altered tiff ... because: 1. I want to keep the original merged file, and 2. I don't want to load up my hard drive.

But after using Lightroom this feels wrong and strange. I have been thinking that if I wanted to make small changes to like the cropping or size or color that it would be better to go back to the altered tiff than to make changes to the jpg or to try to make the image all over again. Whew. What are your thoughts? Is there something I am missing?

Also, is there some reason that I should have the file from Photomatix be less saturated and then do the vibrancy and saturation in Photoshop? I have been thinking that if I made all the cropping and adaptive wide angle perspective changes, then saved a new perspective corrected file as a less saturated tiff file, then made my color editing and saved the jpg, then I would always have a perspective corrected "seed" file to go back to if someone wanted a different crop or size or color style.

Here is an example of an original merged file, and then the uncropped perspective corrected file.

I would consider merging images in Photomatix to a 32bit master file and saving that as an EXR. Then you can open that in Photomatix (or any other application that supports 32bit images) and tone map it, export it TIFF to whatever image editing app and process it further to final output as JPEG. You can get rid of the TIFF and save a preset in its place so you can recreate the tone map that produced the TIFF.

As far as wide angle/perspective correction goes, it may be easier to apply a quick automatic correction in PS CC as part of the image processing you do on the TIFF - just use the Camera Raw filter and apply the Automatic upright tool to restore verticals, etc. Again, you do not need to save a copy of this correction as a TIFF, it is a simple process to replicate in the Camera Raw filter when working with the intermediate TIFF.

So, save the 32bit master as EXR (you can use compression). Save the tone mapping you did to it in Photomatix (or wherever) as a preset so you can always regenerate the working TIFF from the EXR should you need to. Bring the temporary TIFF file into PS, do your color and perspective etc. correction and save as sRGB JPEG (or whatever). Delete the intermediate TIFF, you can always recreate it. If you do a lot of editing on the TIFF to get your final image, save the layered file in PS as a PSD or PSB - this will be your final master than you can use to export to different output (print, web, etc.).

Three saved files:

1) Master 32bit EXR + tone map preset - used to start all variants of the edit
2) PSDs or PSBs of the fully edited and corrected layered, full res PS files (and variants) - used to generate all output
3) Output files (JPEGs, etc.)

I would make your initial tone map a gentle, neutral file for TIFF export to PS or other image processing tool for your actual color, contrast and grading.

kirk

Wow. Lots of information in that post that I will have to digest. I did not know that Photomatix Pro and Photoshop could save to a more intelligent file. I thought that they were destructive and that the only output was the image file that I see on the screen and the only option I had was to undo what I had recently done while in the editor.

Not going to stop using Adaptive Wide Angle. It is EXACTLY what I need and has changed my life.