BudsOwl Loc: Upstate NY and New England

Lately noticed recommendations by some hoggers to save files as tiff. In PSCC, the past I saved any photos with layers as psd so that I can go back and easily edit the layers if I am not happy with my jpg outputs or if something needs to be changed to meet the expectations of the photo recipient. For example I make a composite photo directory of the members of our men's club and may need to remove the picture of one member and replace it with another. Easy enough to do by copying the individual jpgs to the "canvas" base and then arranging them alphabetically, etc. Two questions, would tiff files be smaller than psd and would I be able to make composites in tiff?

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

As it turns out I was just working with some files where I saved versions in both TIFF & PSD. Yes, layers are preserved in TIFF files. But Windows shows TIFF files as being considerably larger than PSD files; 245MB vs. 90MB. So the real advantage I would guess for TIFF is it is a more universal format outside of the Photoshop world. Personally I archive everything as PSD and use them for further processing.

But I do sometimes Flatten my layers to one before going to TIFF, JPG, or even PSD. Depends on what I think I might be doing with the image. For simple final files I don't worry about it much as I can always work from my DNG RAW file. And these days with huge 1 & 2 TB HDDs and similar sized External drives I don't even consider the sizes of my files. I've made panoramas that start as 1+ GB files! I quickly reduce the by some means before Windows quits.

So in your case, you might as well stay with PSDs and then use JPGs for web publishing or printing.

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

Should be able to make composites, I do not see why not.

btbg

As has been said both TIFF and PSD can save layers. PSD saves as smaller sizes, while Tiff is easier to use in other processing software than PSD files are.

Both have advantages. I generally save most images as TIFFS with layers, then when I am completely finished editing flatten the image and save as. If the first image was DSC_1234 then the flattened image will be saved as DSC_1234a. That way if some time in the future I want to rework the image I don't have to start all over.

Even though I usually use TIFF when I am working on a large composite I will save as PSD to keep the file size down. composite images in TIFF can easily become 500mb or even larger, so unless you have a really powerful computer the smaller file size will allow photoshop to run faster.