petercbrandt Loc: New York City, Manhattan

Someone mentioned to me in saving photos for prints, it's extremely close, whether you save in jpg at Quality 12, Maximum, Baseline Optimized, or as a psd.
I doing a series of skies/clouds/sunsets and also abstract water reflections.
What's your opinion ?

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

I have no desire to save images as a PSD,
always JPEG. A JPEG is much more transportable.

If I decide to use an image on the web, I would have to open the PSD and save it as a JPEG.
A useless added step for me.

I'll guess they suggested you save as PSDs because that's what they like to do.
I'll suggest you save in the format that will work best for you.

LarryFB Loc: Depends where our RV is parked

PSD is a Photoshop format, most printers will not be able to print it. JPG is much more universal and probably all printers will require it.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Dupe...

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

My primary saving mode is raw. If it goes to PS I save it as a psd because I can re-edit it later if needed. If I want to print something or share it online I export it as a jpg.

I save both (or all 3) file formats.

BudsOwl Loc: Upstate NY and New England

That’s what I also do since the PSD allows me to keep the layers. I only flatten when I save to jpeg for printing or sending to individuals or the web.

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larryepage Loc: North Texas area

Most printing devices can utilize about 8 bits worth of data..a pretty close match to what JPEG can support. If you are having someone else do your printing, I have found that the answer to your question is best determined by asking them what works best for their process and by knowing whether they may need to make any final adjustments to your images after they receive them from you. My printer likes 16 bit TIFF files, but will accept other formats. They printed one series of night images, and the TIFF files generated weird artifacts. We switched to DNG and the artifacts went away.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

A PSD is not an 'image'. Rather, it's Adobe's image format native to Adobe’s popular Photoshop application(s). This 'PhotoShop Document - PSD' will contain a copy of the underlying / original image and all the editing instructions needed to output those edits into a universal 'target' format like JPEG, TIFF, etc. The PSD may include 'layers' of edit information that must be understood and merged by PS (or PSD-capable software) to create the edited image. As mentioned above, you'll unlikely find any printer nor printing resource who will directly accept a PSD file and print it. Rather, that conversion to a target format must be done by you, or you'll possibly open and print the PSD from your own home workstation, with PS installed, to your own personal printer.

If you edit in a PS software, 'saving' your work as the PSD allows you to revisit the image and continue editing. You can open and Save-As, as needed, to an output format. You can also store those PSDs inside your LR catalog where LR 'flattens' the layers of edit data and outputs the current edit state of the image with the Export command, creating any number of output formats, bit-depths, pixel resolutions and color spaces.

petercbrandt Loc: New York City, Manhattan

when I asked 'the same or close' I meant sharpness, color gamat, basic image quality when blown up.
I'm aware of the tiff format for offset, jpg for the internet ...etc
I always considered a psd file as a file with the most info, no loss. Jpg is a compacted file, right with some loss.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

You're mixing apples and oranges, as in mixing edit formats with display / print formats. The bit-depth of the file determines how much color data can be stored, coupled with the chosen colorspace. These are editing decisions to maintain the most possible data and the finest possible gradation / transition of colors within the image. But, when you output that data down to an 8-bit JPEG in sRGB, you're not going to tell the difference as all those 'possible' 16-bit colors are simply mapped to their actual 8-bit value as exist in the image.

Sharpening is an issue for how you process the image, both for screen and for printing. Again, more data in a source 16-bit file allows for more discrete processing into a target 8-bit JPEG. But, a physical printer doesn't 'print' the images differently because of their file format, the printer simply processes the as-is data in the file as received. If the printer doesn't understand / accept the file format, it doesn't matter how discrete is the data in the file being printed.

fredpnm Loc: Corrales, NM

If sharpness, color gamut, image quality is your concern...always, let me repeat that 'always' PSD over JPG...always.
Contrary to what some have said it is possible to print, from LR, a PSD file using the Print module.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Think you'll re-visit the file wanting to pick up where you left off? Keep it as a PSD.
Some people want to be ready for any possible contingency.
Me, 99.97% of the time, when I finish an edit, I'm done.
I would have no problem starting over with the RAW if I wanted to do something else with an image at a later date.
I don't edit every single image I acquire, only the ones I want to use, when I want to use them. I don't live in front of the editor or live to edit.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

If you intend to rework the images in Photoshop at a later time, then a PSD makes sense, but if you intend to display or print, generally an exported JPEG is the answer (although some printing services may accept a TIFF). I always keep the raw file for potential future use - that’s the actual unmodified data.

petercbrandt Loc: New York City, Manhattan

Thanks everybody for your feed back.
Peter

User ID

No one said that can’t be done. There’s just no benefit and some systems won’t do it at all. But if you own and operate the entire production chain you can do whatever, even printing PDFs if your rip can handle it. And if you’re running a stand alone printer server then you can print almost anything.

But in the workaday normal world, you always print from jpgs.