TIFF vs. JPEG in the real world

jimf · April 9, 2004

The other day I decided to print a selection of my favorite images. In the process I thought I'd do a bit of a comparison and convert each of them to TIFF as well as JPEG and print both using a professional printing service.

I used the Canon image browser to convert the raw images to TIFF and then used Photoshop Elements to convert to superfine JPEG. Then I printed them in a mix of 5x7 and 8x10.

There were striking differences.

First, all of the JPEGs were adjusted in processing for both light and color. Nothing terrible, but very noticable comparing with the TIFF or the monitor. This might be avoidable if you're using Print Image Management, which I guess controls color locking, but by default the print services seem to be keen on trying to correct your images. This was more noticable on flash-lit images than naturally lit.

But most striking was the loss in clarity. Even at only 5x7 the clarity loss was easily noticable. 100% of the time I could pick out the difference and easily identify which image was which.

It's not that the JPEG images were bad, they made fine 8x10s, but the TIFF images were definitely superior in detail.

One of these days I'll scan in the prints and put 'em up so people can see but I thought the topic might be of interest to some people here.

rutt · April 9, 2004

This is interesting. I use jpeg a lot because it makes forr a simple automated workflow, and I haven't had any great success stories with RAW vs jpeg. (10D, PS) I do use maximum quality when I save jpegs most of the time.

When I first decided to experiment with RAW, I bought the PS plugin for PS-7 which also included support for jpeg-2000. This wasn't very well integrated into PS and it was slow. But jpeg-2000 has a lossless mode that makes files about 1/4 the size of tiff files. This seems like a pretty big win. Somehow jpeg 2000 support seems to have been lost with PS-CS. I wonder why?

jimf · April 9, 2004

rutt wrote:

This is interesting. I use jpeg a lot because it makes forr a simple automated workflow, and I haven't had any great success stories with RAW vs jpeg. (10D, PS) I do use maximum quality when I save jpegs most of the time.

I switched to RAW for everything because I have had nothing but bad results from Canon's in-camera white balancing, most especially under flash (this with the 300D, but I understand the 10D is basically the same). I'd rather it just leave it alone and I'll post-correct if I want, it's easy enough to do during conversion. Interestingly the Canon PC software does a fine job of white balancing.

Other than that I didn't have any real preference with RAW versus JPEG and would have preferred JPEG both for ease of workflow and for shot capacity. In fact, if I could turn off white balancing I'd use JPEG most of the time despite the clarity difference I've seen. Then again by using RAW all the time I've had some shots which came out better or could be pulled out of mistakes that would have been difficult to manage otherwise.

Regarding lossless JPEG, I've taken to saving in TIFF LZW format. It's substantially smaller than standard TIFF with no loss in quality. I kind of wish I could make Photoshop use LZW by default.

rutt · April 9, 2004

jimf wrote:

I switched to RAW for everything because I have had nothing but bad results from Canon's in-camera white balancing, most especially under flash (this with the 300D, but I understand the 10D is basically the same). I'd rather it just leave it alone and I'll post-correct if I want, it's easy enough to do during conversion. Interestingly the Canon PC software does a fine job of white balancing.

I suppose this isn't as big an issue for me as it is for others because I'm pretty good at color correction using curves. I shoot large jpeg, not RAW most of the time, and always use AWB. But when I get an image that I like enough to care, I balance with curves. I think this gets results at least as good as setting the balance at shooting time. It is an exact science, for one thing.

Working this way allows for a completely automated workflow from shooting to posting of unretouched shots, which I consider to be essentially proofsheets. Then I correct the ones that matter.

jimf · April 9, 2004

rutt wrote:

I suppose this isn't as big an issue for me as it is for others because I'm pretty good at color correction using curves. I shoot large jpeg, not RAW most of the time, and always use AWB. But when I get an image that I like enough to care, I balance with curves. I think this gets results at least as good as setting the balance at shooting time. It is an exact science, for one thing.

I've never even tried to correct using curves. How does one go about doing that? To date I've just used the color temperature adjustments in the Canon tool but I am looking to move to using Photoshop for everything (it's so much faster than Canon's thing, and easy to automate).

rutt · April 9, 2004

jimf wrote:

I've never even tried to correct using curves. How does one go about doing that?

IMHO, the best way to learn about color correction is from Dan Margulis. His book, Professional Photoshop: The Classic Guide to Color Correction, is a must have, even for those who are not 100% in agreement with Dan's approach. The title is a little deceptive, the book is set in the context of Photoshop, but really is about color theory. As such, it is deeper than you might have thought you needed. On the other hand, it is also more fun and interesting (at least to me) than a book just about how to use Photoshop. I have also found this book to be very well written. It is not only clear and accurate, but also actually fun to read, something very rare in a book ostensibly about Photoshop.

A few chapters of the book are online at Dan's site.

pathfinder · April 9, 2004

jimf wrote:

I switched to RAW for everything because I have had nothing but bad results from Canon's in-camera white balancing, most especially under flash (this with the 300D, but I understand the 10D is basically the same). I'd rather it just leave it alone and I'll post-correct if I want, it's easy enough to do during conversion. Interestingly the Canon PC software does a fine job of white balancing.

Other than that I didn't have any real preference with RAW versus JPEG and would have preferred JPEG both for ease of workflow and for shot capacity. In fact, if I could turn off white balancing I'd use JPEG most of the time despite the clarity difference I've seen. Then again by using RAW all the time I've had some shots which came out better or could be pulled out of mistakes that would have been difficult to manage otherwise.

Regarding lossless JPEG, I've taken to saving in TIFF LZW format. It's substantially smaller than standard TIFF with no loss in quality. I kind of wish I could make Photoshop use LZW by default.

Jimf-
Have you set your 300D up with the light color balance set to Electronic flash as opposed to AWB? Might make a real difference in the color balance of your images? One of the suggestions made in the Epson Print Academy was to try the other light balance settings - cloudy, overcast, electronic flsh, tungsten in addition to AWB - It was my experience last winter that cloudy gave a much better color endition of snow than AWB especially early in the morning which rendered way too blue. As you say, in RAW, there is no need since yiou can adjust the color balance to suit after the fact.
I tend to agree with you that jpgs look very good, until you compare them side by side with prints from psds or tiffs. Pictures that I hold as my very best work I save as psd and jpg both. The prints from the psd's seem sharper to me - they should be as they are saved as 16bit.

pathfinder · April 9, 2004

rutt wrote:

This is interesting. I use jpeg a lot because it makes forr a simple automated workflow, and I haven't had any great success stories with RAW vs jpeg. (10D, PS) I do use maximum quality when I save jpegs most of the time.

When I first decided to experiment with RAW, I bought the PS plugin for PS-7 which also included support for jpeg-2000. This wasn't very well integrated into PS and it was slow. But jpeg-2000 has a lossless mode that makes files about 1/4 the size of tiff files. This seems like a pretty big win. Somehow jpeg 2000 support seems to have been lost with PS-CS. I wonder why?

Actually I seem to rememeber that jpg2000 is present in PS CS - I have never used jpg2000 ( I have thought about it) but there seems to be nowhere else it is used - Certainly it is not suported well on the web, and in PS I use jpgs or psd's.
I agree that the workflow is PS 7 lacked a lot - particularly 16bit support for images - But PS CS allows most of your work to be done in the 16 bit file imported from the RAW converter - For me the only real downside to RAW files is that they take more room to store and that there is no easy simple RAW viewer in Windows yet.
I wish VuePrint would display RAW files - I use it a LOT when just looking at images stored on cdr's. VuePrint is FAST and available at www.hamrick.com. I have used it as my primary file viewer for more than 5 years. I may suggest that they add RAW image viewing to VuePrint - not that they would listen to me. But they also make VueScan which uses RAW files from film and flatbed scanners so it should not be that hard for them.

fish · April 9, 2004

pathfinder wrote:

Jimf-
Have you set your 300D up with the light color balance set to Electronic flash as opposed to AWB?

That's made a huge difference for me...when I remember to switch it.

rutt · April 9, 2004

You'll find that my opinion on this isn't exactly mainstream, at least not on dgrin. As you can see, a lot of really good photographers, like Pathfiner, either shoot RAW or worry about the settings of their WB at the time of shooting. I can't argue with Pathfinders methods, his images are really beautiful and show the care he takes. So whatever he does, it works a lot of the time.

But I'd like to be clear about exactly what I think works or not:

Double jpeg encoding -- doesn't work. If you shoot jpeg, retouch, and save jpegs, even I can see that the image isn't as sharp. Zoom in and you may be able to see the jpeg artifacts. This is fine for images for the web, but not for your favorite images that you want to print. So I always save lossless versions of images that I retouch, unless I'm sure I'll never want to print them.
Shoting large jpegs -- Usually my images have bigger problems than whether or not they were shot RAW. Canon large in-camera jpeg encoding is very high quality (and the files are large compared to, say, quality 8 in Photoshop). When I nail it, my images are very sharp. When they are not sharp, I can usually figure out what what the operator error was.
Camera WB, vs RAW conversion, vs color correction. -- All these work to some degree. Only color correction by the numbers is an exact science.
Dynamic range. RAW images do have a somewhat greater dynamic range then even the best jpeg encoding. So you may be able to save images with over or under exposed details. As I've gotten more involved with color correction, I've found that I can ofent do with just the jpeg. When I think of it and when it's practical, I do try to shoot RAW in very high contrast situations. But I've disappointed shooting RAW for the most high contrast shots -- sunsets, sunrises, indoor shots with bright light in the windows. I have never been able to recover any more detail from these than from the jpegs. And I think this is the biggest drawback of the digital cameras I've owned vs the film cameras I've owned. So it would be huge if RAW really offered much in the way of increased dynamic range.

rutt · April 9, 2004

pathfinder wrote:

Actually I seem to rememeber that jpg2000 is present in PS CS - I have never used jpg2000 ( I have thought about it) but there seems to be nowhere else it is used - Certainly it is not suported well on the web, and in PS I use jpgs or psd's.

If you can find jpg2k, in PS/CS, consider using it in place of psds for final versions. It can be lossless and at least 16 bits (maybe more, I forget.) So it makes a fine intermediate version; much smaller than psd without any image degradation. It just won't save your layers, color samplers, &etc. Like RAW and psd, it's no replacement for jpeg because there aren't many viewers for it. Unlike them, it does have the promise of becoming widely accepted in the future.

rutt · April 9, 2004

rutt wrote:

If you can find jpg2k, in PS/CS, consider using it in place of psds for final versions. It can be lossless and at least 16 bits (maybe more, I forget.) So it makes a fine intermediate version; much smaller than psd without any image degradation. It just won't save your layers, color samplers, &etc. Like RAW and psd, it's no replacement for jpeg because there aren't many viewers for it. Unlike them, it does have the promise of becoming widely accepted in the future.

I checked on this, and by default, PS/CS doesn't supprot jpeg2000. But apparently it ships with a an optional plugin that does. Here is the support page from Adobe describing how to enable.

TIFF vs. JPEG in the real world

Comments