JPEG or TIFF?

Sean Ealy · August 16, 2011

I understand that when saving in TIFF form it does not compress the file, as it does in JPEG. My understanding is that TIFF files offer the best option for printing, while JPEGS are great for web and email viewing. I was curious what some of you are offering your clients when giving them a CD/DVD? Are you giving them TIFF, JPEG or both?

zoomer · August 16, 2011

Jpegs for printing and providing to clients.
Tiffs are great if during the processing phase the photo will be saved several times. If you save a jpeg more than a 2 or 3 times you will start to see a degradation.

Peano · August 16, 2011

Some tiffs are compressed, some not. Depends on the settings you choose when saving an image.

High-res jpegs saved at a reasonably high quality setting are fine for printing. If you shoot raw and work in Photoshop, your best bet is to save the .psd file. From that you can always generate a tiff or jpeg. I send my clients jpegs. One client prefers tiffs, so I save it with zip compression. I never send uncompressed tiffs. They're huge, and there's no benefit to be gained from it.

mercphoto · August 16, 2011

But I think, and someone correct me if I'm wrong, TIFF's are compreessed using a lossless algorithm -- you get everything back, perfectly, when it is decompressed. Definitely not the case with JPG (or MP3 for that matter).

pathfinder · August 16, 2011

That is my understanding too, Bill, that tiffs use a lossless compression algorithm.

That said, excellent prints can and are made from jpgs as the final edits of images everyday.

I think of tiffs as files for saving and editing, not just for printing.

Peano · August 16, 2011

mercphoto wrote: »

But I think, and someone correct me if I'm wrong, TIFF's are compreessed using a lossless algorithm

Correct. The question was whether tiffs are uncompressed. They are, or aren't, depending on how you save them.

Dan7312 · August 16, 2011

Tiff's are a generic format for any data, not just images. The can use use a looseless compression. They also can save all the layers in a Photoshop project or flatten the layers, but a jpeg is always flattened to a single layer. I think jpeg2000 format can save layers too, but it's just isn't widely supported.

mercphoto wrote: »

But I think, and someone correct me if I'm wrong, TIFF's are compreessed using a lossless algorithm -- you get everything back, perfectly, when it is decompressed. Definitely not the case with JPG (or MP3 for that matter).

JPEG or TIFF?

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