Lee Roman Loc: Lavalette, West Virginia

This has been very interesting! Thanks for the Question and the Answer explained!!

greekd214

For each shoot, I save raw, tiff, and jpeg files. I use tiff files to make prints, and jpeg files to share with family an friends via emails and posts.

revhen Loc: By the beautiful Hudson

Lazy me, I just take JPG. But when I post process for printing especially, I save as PNG, another lossless file type. If I have to do subsequent editing I again save as PNG. Now, as with TIFF, these are huge files. So when I want to send them online I resave as a JPG, often with a slightly different name so I don't confuse with the original. I adjust the compression to get a satisfactory size.

rehess Loc: South Bend, Indiana, USA

If I can do the change needed in gimp and have to stop in the middle, I just use XCF - the software's native mode.

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

Not really true. The only time you lose quality with a JPEG is if you make changes to it. You can open and close it over and over all day long and at the end of the day it will be exactly the same as when you started.

If you modify it in any way, then re-save it, the JPEG file will be re-compressed and each time that's done, it loses a little quality.



TIFF files are big... much bigger than JPEGs. One reason for this is that JPEGs are "8-bit"... means there is a palette of some 17 million colors and tonalities usable in JPEGs. (256 per color channel.) TIFF files can be 8-bit, too... but are usually 16-bit. And 16-bit means 65,536 colors per channel and a palette of 281 trillion possible colors and tonalities!

It is good to do your post-processing adjustments, noise reduction, retouching, cropping, re-sizing, and sharpeing to a 16-bit image file. This makes for the smoothest tonal transitions (less chance of "banding") and best results.

HOWEVER, 16-bit is overkill for many final purposes.

You should NEVER upload 16-bit TIFF files for online sharing. They're just too big. Also, it's possible that many other peoples' computers don't have a means of displaying a TIFF. But virtually every computer can display an 8-bit JPEG.

Also, 8-bit JPEGs are all that's needed for most printing processes. You will see little to no difference between an 8-bit JPEG and 16-bit TIFF printed on a photo quality ink jet. A 16-bit file may print slower and use more ink than necessary. Many printing services require JPEGs and reject TIFFs. In fact, the human eye can only distinguish around 16 million colors, at best. So 8-bit JPEGs are fine and the best choice for many purposes. I would only use/provide a TIFF file if a customer or printer requests it.



Cameras actually do save a TIFF file, in a sense. When you save a RAW, that's sort of like a TIFF file with some other stuff wrapped around it.

Most cameras shoot RAW with 12-bit or 14-bit color depth... which is later interpolated by post-processing software as a 16-bit TIFF.

All images made by all digital cameras are RAW files, initially. When you set the camera to save JPEGs only, the camera is putting those through a fast, in-camera post-processing, converting them to JPEG, and then "throwing away" the RAW and a lot of data the camera "didn't need" for the JPEG conversion. I

f you save RAW + JPEG, it does the same in-camera conversion to create the JPEG, but also saves the original RAW.

If you just save RAW, there's no in-camera processing being done. It's left up to you to do it later with your computer.

You can ALWAYS make a JPEG from a RAW..... You can NEVER make a RAW from a JPEG. Once the RAW data is gone, it's gone. There's no getting it back.

It's not quite the same with 8-bit versus 16-bit. In general, you want to start with the RAW file to do 16-bit post-processing (during which the file is essentially a TIFF or a variation on that file type such as Photoshop's PSD). That will give the best possible results.

There's a lot less to be gained converting a file to 16-bit if it's already been reduced to 8-bit, if all you have to start with is a JPEG. Yes, it can be a little better to convert the 8-bit file to 16-bit to work on it, than just make the same adjustments directly to an 8-bit file. But it's not going to be nearly as good as starting with the full RAW data package and working from that in 16-bit color depth mode.



You are actually already doing that, in a sense, whenever you work with a RAW file. Once the RAW has been opened and during the post-processing it is essentially a 16-bit TIFF.

The real question you should be asking is, when the post-processing work is done, should then SAVE the file as a 16-bit TIFF,or convert it to 8-bit and save it as a JPEG?

For most uses, the JPEG is the better choice. As noted above, it's even required for some purposes.

It is mostly commercial purposes when it may be preferable to save the image as a 16-bit TIFF (or PSD or some other file types). For example, a client licensing use of an image may request a TIFF so that they can edit and adjust the image for their purposes with the best quality possible. A commercial printer making separations for a printing press may prefer a TIFF, too.

Mostly you should save your images as 8-bit JPEGs. Just keep your RAW files, then you can always create another TIFF or JPEG or whatever you want from it.



There are some good reasons to shoot RAW + JPEG. Maybe you need to use the images right away, where the JPEGs are necessary. But you also want to be able to work with the more carefully later and the RAWs are a better starting point for that.

RAW + JPEG is also a good learning tool, for people just getting into post-processing. You can compare the JPEG from the camera to the results of your post-processing the RAW. Initially, the camera processing image might be better than what you do. But in time you will probably find your post-processing does a better job. When that's the case consistently, you can probably switch to just shooting RAW (unless you have immediate need for usable images, as above).

NOTE: There are some cameras that save TIFFs instead of RAW, as well as some that save 16-bit files instead of 12-bit or 14-bit. Those are rare, though.... mostly pro-oriented medium format digital.

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

Sometimes they are several times larger then raw files.

BebuLamar

Sure they have to. They hold more information than the RAW files. From every photosite the RAW only records one value. The camera will then have to create 3 values to put them in the TIFF file for each pixel.

Jmurray

I shoot in Tiff and save copies in jpeg .

Jmurray

I shoot in Tiff and save copies in jpeg when needed .

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

I don't believe the raw file and the tif are really comparable. A tif is definitely not a raw file. The raw file contains a list of all the pixels, each representing only a red, green, or blue portion of the image. The tif file is more like a bitmap, where each pixel has the full 3-color value that has been extracted from the raw file by software. The tif is actually a finished image, where the raw file is only a latent image. The process of converting the raw data to a finished image will "bake in" some image characteristics such as white balance, which are not present in the raw data. Thus the raw file has significantly more information than the tif file, no matter what the bit depth of the tif file might be.

rehess Loc: South Bend, Indiana, USA

This Thread is about JPEG and TIFF - both of which are specified file types - not about ‘raw’, which is a group of file types. People can speculate based on observation, but unless someone knows how a particular type is stored, all this is just guessing, and none of it is germane to the subject.

fantom Loc: Colorado

dasgeiss

I used Tiff many years ago and dropped it when I found the file sizes to be wastefully large and have stuck with jpeg ever since. Have not been disappointed.

NikonRocks Loc: Sydney

[quote=PhotobyWD]Hello, I shoot in raw and jpeg and recently started saving my best photos to Tif files.

I have a Nikon D500 which allows one to capture photos converted on output to 8-bit TIFF using Adobe RGB color space and saved on a memory card in either the XQD or SD memory card slots. The camera takes the 14-bit raw data and processes the image converting it to 16-bit using the settings set up according to the settings in the Picture Control Menu. It then writes the image out to the card as 8-bit TIFF. The camera provides for 6 different TIFF file sizes according to the quality one requires. ( 3 in DX format and 3 in DX/1.3x format).

One would have to look very closely to see any difference between the same image save as a TIFF as against JPG. On closer inspection one may see artifacts in the JPG where there is none in TIFF. One could probably do better post processing on the Camera produced TIFF by turning off internal control parameters. For example, sharpening could be better handled post processing rather than let the camera do that job by turning the Sharpening Control back to zero from the default of 3.

Whilst RAW allows for better exposure control using post processing software, TIFF does not. So it is incumbent on the photographer to get the exposure correct at the get-go. Similarly for JPGs

rehess Loc: South Bend, Indiana, USA

Maybe you could set the Sharpening Control to 1 or 2 and get what you want.
That is what I have done with my Pentax KP on advice from those who already had experience with it.

I do my very best to get exposure correct just as I did with Kodachrome.