gvarner Loc: Central Oregon Coast

For high quality printing either in-home or send out, what's the best format, TIFF or JPEG?

Apaflo Loc: Anchorage, Alaska

For print quality it makes no difference.

However, for "send out" the size of a TIFF file might be a problem, plus it is possible some printers may not want to deal with TIFF files. Hence away from home, a JPEG is often a better choice.

For in house printing, the TIFF is better just because you should be editing and saving intermediate files as TIFF's rather than JPEG's, so making a JPEG just to print is probably just extra work for no benefit.

tsilva Loc: Arizona

For sending out, whatever format the printer designates.

Armadillo Loc: Ventura, CA

Gvarner,
The better file format for printing an image would be the uncompressed TFF file; this would be good for home printing. The next best is the JPG format.

His would be true for off site printing, except for the fact most commercial printing shops require .jpg for their printers.

High-resolution images are successfully printed on commercial printers on a large scale using the JPG file format, the trick is to not compress the file too much.

If you were only going to print at home, and you had a high-resolution color printer, your best choice would be your image editing software’s default, non-compression (loss-less) file format. That file format would not be accepted at commercial printers, Walmart, Costco, Sam’s, or your corner drugstore.

For additional information Google for:
Image file formats, select the page for Wikipedia.

Critical to your needs will be what you will be doing with your photographs; sharing files, or keeping all files to yourself.

Michael G

Apaflo Loc: Anchorage, Alaska

There is no reason to use uncompressed, as opposed to a TIFF using Abobe Deflate (bzip) or LZW compression. Both are lossless, so that image data is exactly the same but the file size is significantly reduced.


They actually can use either format as far as the printers are concerned. They don't want to deal with the problems of downloading huge files.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

It depends on your printer - some custom labs will accept 16 bit Adobe RGB files, most only accept 8 bit jpeg sRGB. It all depends on how they are set up, and whether the RIP they use can process 16 bit files. Many print labs will accept 16 bit tif but convert it down to 8 bit jpeg. It's best to check with the lab.

Some printers from Canon and Epson can process files in 16 bit, but you are unlikely to see a difference between prints made in 8 bit or 16 bit if you are using images that have average color gamut and tonal/color gradations.

http://www.beacongraphics.com/canon/canon-ipf5100.html

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Almost all commercial photo labs accept JPEG files in sRGB color space. Some accept ONLY that.

Check with the lab if you wish to use any other file type or color space.