Saving Files .. Which Format

[HairyHaggis]

OK, probably a simple one here. JPEG loses quality each and every time it is saved ok ... SO ...

Shooting in RAW, edit the RAW file, and the first save should be ?????

PSD, TIFF, etc ??

Save for Web ..... I always save for web as JPEG as you can have the original there anyway to redo if needed ....

BUT ... PSD files ... can you view them as thumbs in anything except bridge ???

Thanks in advance, and please give me options if possible. :)

[Steve P]

I save in Tiff's Steve although there are other formats. PSD is useful as it allows you to see the changes made but I would look at the good old Tiff!


Steve

[Melody]

I save my files as PSD...just habit I suppose...I typically review the thumbnails in bridge or in BreezeBrowser

The files I have converted in Capture One I save as Tiff

Melody

[sandman]

OK, probably a simple one here. JPEG loses quality each and every time it is saved ok ... SO ...

Shooting in RAW, edit the RAW file, and the first save should be ?????

PSD, TIFF, etc ??

Save for Web ..... I always save for web as JPEG as you can have the original there anyway to redo if needed ....

BUT ... PSD files ... can you view them as thumbs in anything except bridge ???

Thanks in advance, and please give me options if possible. :)

Just to qualify Steve .
Jpegs lose quality every time they are saved , yes , most of the time that is after you've edited the photo , but if you just open and close , no matter how many times then the quality is unaffected .
The PSD format i normally use if i have a few layers that i might want to edited later .
Otherwise i use jpeg , yes i know it's a lossy format but save in the highest quality and you can savee quiet a few times before it's effected .
Tiff files i use if i know i'm going to edited the image a lot and just want to keep the highest quality , but most of my TIFS converted from RAW are in the 60-70mb region , so i limited the amount i do .
I guess if you convert to TIF and burn onto a CD it'll save H/D space .
In the end it all boils down to how many times you plan to edit ( therefore re-saving a few times).
Top quality jpegs save on H/D space but do degenerate as you re-save .
TIFS keep the original quality no matter how many times you re-save .
PSD allows you to keep your layers and is also a lossless format .
There's also the DNG format which is supposed to be smaller then TIF but also lossless but i've never used it .
Jpeg2000 was supposed to be the new all singing and dancing format by now , but it's support seems to be limited.

Brian

[easternherp]

Steve,

I tend to shoot RAW and then save as PSD and then JPEGS to print from at a lab. If the best quality is what you are after then PSD or Tiff is the way to go. If you shoot Jpeg first you can always open it and resave as Tiff and then you can edit the tiff to your hearts content. As I go I archive to DVD and then remove them from the hard drive after a year.
The price of external hardrives has come down considerably now and it works out cheaper to use them for storage rather than DVD.

[HairyHaggis]

Many thanks to you all for comments,

Steve P, Melody, Brian, Mr Herp :)

The reason I ask is that recently after doing a massive backup onto DVD of all my phtoos etc, with a view to thinning out the crud, and keeping a backup of the "good" ones, I noticed that after burning some of the discs were not reading in the drives with CRC errors, etc, and after losing one full model disc of Danni, I decided upon the external drive, and got myself a 400Gb external one as a master backup to sit outside my backup drive which was a 300Gb SATA drive in the computer.

Now looking at the around 140Gb of images I had, I looked closer to find that I held about 4 versions of the same file. The original RAW, the converted TIFF, the editting JPEG, and the web sized JPEG ... so I was thinking, after saving three images from the recent hair shoot as PSD files, that if I wanted to perserve the quality for future editting, or storage, then I should look at a lossless file as keeping a master, this way I will know from the sets, which has been editted .. hopefully.

I think I will keep as PSD as the filesize is smaller than TIFF, and then edit if I need to, adn at least with the PSD file, the layer information will remain intact too.

Many thanks to you all for advice.

Thanks.

[Igor]

Compressed TIFF's , Steve.
Get yourself a couple of 750Gb h'disks and their (TIFF files) sizes shouldn't bother you :)

[photoworks]

Steve be careful with the DVDs, not all of them are suitable for archiving, I had some almost two years old and are unreadable. :mad2:
Buy only the best ,I think EMTEC Black(former BASF) and TDK Scratchproof are the only ones with prooven warranty.

Cheers
Billy

[robinp]

I save as 16 bit (LZW compressed) tiffs and always keep the original raw file - still learning all the time and surprised myself this afternoon by going back to some Fuji S2 RAF's from 2 years ago, converting and processing with what I know now makes it look like a great camera!
Some people save space by converting all their raw files to .dng which would make things simple if you've had several different camera raw formats but I haven't done this as in the end the camera manufacturer's software always seems to give the best colour.
Psd - what's that? ;) :) Never used it, I like to play with my images in whatever software takes my fancy so it has to be a universally recognised .tiff......

Cheers, Robin

p.s. BTW I run two hard drives in a mirrored RAID array and back up to external HDD once a week.

[Gurrah]

is normally like this.

Since I do mostly composites with a lot of stitched photos to create panos, there is mostly no need to shoot RAW´s, and when I started out the format wasnt even invented, so I shoot mostly the highest quality jpg.
There would also be one enormous overload of weight and extra work in converting from RAW for the stitch.
Those I import to the folder.
Then I stitch them, from jpg directly to the finished stitch, BUT, from there on there is NO jpg-saving whatsoever until I cmpress for the web.
I save the stitch in BMP, non-destructive native Windows-format, and always always edit everything in that format.

Saving "jpg to jpg to jpg" will do the most harm, so if it is nessecary to edit after a shot, just simply save to a non-destructive format, BMP, Tif are the most common.
TGA is another that is ok.

I regard JPG as the "enduser-format", one that should not be tampered with anymore for the sake of quality.

Should there be more editing required, make certain that you have the last version saved in uncompressed undestroyed format.

OH, and BTW, the S3 has the best in-camera-jpg I have ever seen.
I can, but I have to look very hard, find the jpg-artifacts, but they are practically non-existant if you compare to what the S2 has.

So even I you dont plan to do only RAW and superior dynamics with every shot, the S3 is still the nest there is for a "quick-n-dirty" catch...

Its a pity that the Jpeg2000 didnt take off as it promised, it was a better format than jpg - but lo and behold, I read that Microsoft has announced
a new compressed imageformat that will be about 50 % better compression than jpg/jpg2000 but with a lot better quality.

That might sound like an impossibility, but if you have compared their "native" videoformat, the "wmv" to the uncompressed .avi or the compressed -mpg-formats, you realise pretty soon that they know what they are doing.
The wmv-format simply leaves other compressed format lightyears behind as far as imageqquality AND weight...

They will probably, with that in mind, be able to do just that, which in my case will look something like this:

From the jpgs from the S3, I stitch a pano saved in BMP for editing, once edited and ready for the web it weighs appx 210 megs.
Until now we bruing down the size from 12000x6000 to 6000x3000, and have a weight of 52 megs to deal with to be able to present it on the clients website in as good condition as possible without forcing the visitors to wait for an hour to view it in the viewer.
We are most the time able to compress it to something between 1-1,5 megs and still keep it decent.

With a new format with the specs that has been given (I saw the news about it on Cnet about 2 months or so ago) in comparison to what we are forced to use today, we would probably have a choice of either having the full 12000x6000 and have it workable directly in the webpage with a weight of 1-1,5 megs but still with a better quality, and the 6000x3000-version we would have a weight of perhaps 200-300 kb and still have a better final version with less visible destruction.

Then there will of course be the problem with having any format coming from Microsoft being accepted for what it is, instead of all the mad paranoiacs who cannot give credit where credit is due who all must claim that it is only another take-over-the-world-plt from the terrible MS...

With all the problems we have had and still face with the huge size and weight of high-quality images, I hope they loose out on that one.

I will welcome it if it turns up.
Then the only jpg I would use would be the one from the camera.
But if it woul turn up to be a universally accepted format and the cameramakers would adapt it and replace the the jpg with it, it would be a total success.

50% better compression on average and 50 % better imagequality on top of that.