Psd / Tif

Antonio Correia

I open a RAW file in PS CS2
I work on it:hotcake
After the work shall I Save it on PSD or TIF ?
TIF compresses the layers, PSD doesn't:):
This makes me think that PSD is better.:dunno
Then I save the file to JPG to send to smugmug after what I erase it and keep the "Photoshoped" original and the CR2 (RAW) file.
Your opinion please ... Thank you:thumb

Andy

Antonio Correia wrote:

I open a RAW file in PS CS2
I work on it:hotcake
After the work shall I Save it on PSD or TIF ?
TIF compresses the layers, PSD doesn't:):
This makes me think that PSD is better.
Then I save the file to JPG to send to smugmug after what I erase it and keep the "Photoshoped" original and the CR2 (RAW) file.
Your opinion please ... Thank you

If I intend to work on a file again at a later date, I'll always save as a layered psd file.

Antonio Correia

Psd

I do not need to thank, do I ? (because of the little man with the thumb up).
Great help by the way.
These littles bits of information are pieces of cake...

Antonio Correia

Photography
As we learn, our photography improves and this is normal.:):
Sometimes we regret we had not the necessary knowledge at the right time.
What do I mean ? I mean I have lots of photos in JPG (those I have inserted in smugmug and shot in Burma) whitch are lost in terms of quality...
And many others...
We will never end to learn ...

rutt

I'm going to say something very controversial: highest quality jpeg doesn't lose anything you can see vs either tiff or psd, except the layers.

It's very controversial but the people who really know what's going on also know that it's true. You won't see artifacts in quality 12 jpegs unless they've been reopened, edited, and saved many times. Even with very large prints.

And the 8 bit vs 16 bit thing is a major can of worms; you can find endless debate about it. But here's the thing. It's highly controversial whether 16 bit colors actually buy anything. The people who think it does haven't made the argument convincing.

So, you don't have to be too unhappy about those jpegs. I find that keeping the raw versions of my best shots is a good idea, but my post technique gets better with time, so I don't really lose anything so long as I have the raw versions. But most of the time, even the out-of-the-camera jpegs would be fine.

Mike Lane

I'm a psd keeper myself. My thought is that what would photoshop support better natively, tif or psd? My guess, psd.

My photo images are only ever in one of 3 formats (or maybe all three depending) CR2, PSD, and JPG. My graphics are either psd, gif, or png. I never, ever use jpgs for graphics and I never, ever use gifs for images. pngs are the jack of all trades and I'm predicting a png-splosion after IE7 is released

colourbox

If you no longer need the layers, TIFF or max quality JPEG are fine and anything can open them. PNG's going to be great after Microsoft catches IE up with the rest of the world.

If you do need the layers, layered TIFF or PSD are fine.

I tried TIFF for a while, but it takes Photoshop much longer to save a big layered TIFF than a big layered PSD, so I'm back to PSD.

Antonio Correia wrote:

TIF compresses the layers, PSD doesn't:):
This makes me think that PSD is better.

Check your file sizes afterward. Some images are smaller as PSD, despite the apparent compression with TIF. The truth is, PSD does use RLE compression on its layers and channels, so some compression is applied. TIF simply gives you other compression options like LZW and ZIP.

bham

I only keep a saved PSD of the image if I did something to selective parts of the image. First thing I do with images is put them in a file folder of originals on 3 seperate hard drives and then regularly burn originals to cd's (multiple copies). I soon will begin my massive job of uploading all originals to smugmug for another copy.

I save with a different name once any changes are made so basically originals are only copied or read but not rewritten.

By no means am I an expert at this (knowledge wise in the area of archival techniques, compression loss, artifacting, etc), but everything at PSD size would start to get ginormous. I mean I must have 320 - 400 cd of originals (multiple sets).

Antonio Correia

To you all
Thank you.
:

rutt

colourbox wrote:

Check your file sizes afterward. Some images are smaller as PSD, despite the apparent compression with TIF. The truth is, PSD does use RLE compression on its layers and channels, so some compression is applied. TIF simply gives you other compression options like LZW and ZIP.

There's plenty of air in psd files. If you have a mac with OS X, you already have a command line utility called bzip2, which in my experience provides the very most effective lossless compression. I used it to compress a couple of psd files I happened to have lying around and got results in the 50% to 40% range, meaning that psd files compressed with bzip2 are just a little larger than 1/2 their original size. If you want to keep these things around or move them over the internet, this is a good thing to know how to do, because a 16 bit psd file from a 12MP image can easily be 70MB with no layers at all.

colourbox

rutt wrote:

There's plenty of air in psd files.

Sure, I wasn't claiming that PSD compresses as well as other methods, because you're right. Sometimes TIF is smaller, and TIF + ZIP can be smaller still. (The reason they don't tell you to use ZIP every time is because not all applications and RIPs can read it.)

My main point was simply that it's a misconception that PSD files aren't compressed.

Also, I read somewhere (probably at the Adobe forums) that at some point Photoshop fixed a bug relating to 16-bit layer compression although I can't remember the specifics.

Antonio Correia

PSDs TIFFs ETCs
So, lets be pragmatic:

1. 01.CR2 from the camera - to be kept as original, then
2. conversion to 01.PSD - work in Photoshop and save, then
3. conversion to 01.JPG - to send to smugmug
4. If this file is not properly photoshoped or needs correction, then
5. open the 01.PSD and conversion (with overwrighting) to 01.JPG to send to smugmug

OR

1. 02.JPG from the camera - to be kept as original, then
2. conversion to 02.PSD - work in Photoshop and save, then
3. conversion to 03.JPG (NO overwright to the original) - to send to smugmug
4. if this file is not properly photoshoped or needs correction, then open the 02.PSD and
5. conversion to 03.JPG (overwrights) - to send to smugmug

:bash

Mike Lane

Antonio Correia wrote:

So, lets be pragmatic:

1. 01.CR2 from the camera - to be kept as original, then
2. conversion to 01.PSD - work in Photoshop and save, then
3. conversion to 01.JPG - to send to smugmug
4. If this file is not properly photoshoped or needs correction, then
5. open the 01.PSD and conversion (with overwrighting) to 01.JPG to send to smugmug

OR

1. 02.JPG from the camera - to be kept as original, then
2. conversion to 02.PSD - work in Photoshop and save, then
3. conversion to 03.JPG (NO overwright to the original) - to send to smugmug
4. if this file is not properly photoshoped or needs correction, then open the 02.PSD and
5. conversion to 03.JPG (overwrights) - to send to smugmug

:bash

For the first part, the raw part, I generally skip the save as psd mostly because I don't expect to have to redo an image once it's done. So unless I've done something really crazy with layers and such, I use ACR to adjust the raw file if need be, work on it as a 16 bit file in photoshop and ultimately save it as a jpg (and therefore discard the layerd version of the file).

But that's just me.

rainforest1155

What I often do when I want to save space, but keep the layered PSD, is to delete the actual image out of the PSD and just save it as some kind of 'mask'. These PSDs usually are very small.
Some day when I want to work further on the image I load the original jpg back into PS and get back to work.

Sebastian

Angelo

rutt wrote:

I'm going to say something very controversial: highest quality jpeg doesn't lose anything you can see vs either tiff or psd, except the layers.

It's very controversial but the people who really know what's going on also know that it's true. You won't see artifacts in quality 12 jpegs unless they've been reopened, edited, and saved many times. Even with very large prints.

And the 8 bit vs 16 bit thing is a major can of worms; you can find endless debate about it. But here's the thing. It's highly controversial whether 16 bit colors actually buy anything. The people who think it does haven't made the argument convincing.

So, you don't have to be too unhappy about those jpegs. I find that keeping the raw versions of my best shots is a good idea, but my post technique gets better with time, so I don't really lose anything so long as I have the raw versions. But most of the time, even the out-of-the-camera jpegs would be fine.

Antonio Correia

JPGs
Well, so far so good.:):
Let's save As JPG:
Which format option for the best picture ?
Baseline / Baseline Optimized / Progressive Scans 3 / Progressive Scans 4 / Progressive Scans 5 ?
Size goes from 14.4 Kbps to 2 MBps ...

Regardless of the final size of the picture which options should be choosen ?
Thank you folks !! ...
Have a nice week end