Do you really need that high quality?

Confusing advice given on image editing

[timchuma]

It seems much of the advice given on image editing for the web really should apply to print instead. I can't count the number of times I have heard people say you should save as a TIFF file, but who really uses that outside professional printers?

Probably the best thing you could do when editing a complex technical image is to save it in the format that supports layers. Then "save as" to make any web copies.

As I edit many photos myself the advice here is a bit different. Save the original and back it up straight away. If you are working on creating an image gallery, save any changes to the original dimensions as the web gallery program/script should be able to reduce the files manually.

Create a seperate directory for the reduced size images if your program/script doesn't resize automatically.
I learnt this myself when I have wanted to go back and print larger sizes of the edited images, only to find I only have copies at 800*600.

Any other advice?

[limbo]

TIFF file, but who really uses that outside professional printers?

We store all our photos as TIFF's and they are used for all sorts of projects, not just print.

It is a an excellent file type for cross platform storage as your average Windows kit will 'preview' the image without the need for other software - so even your boss with Win98 kit can see what you send him. Plus and all image editing software I have come across will recognise .TIFF - you can even put em' in Word docs! The same cannot be said for a .PSD for example. And because it is non-lossy it preserves all the original information, A JPEG will not do this. And you can save layers, text, masks, paths, clipping paths and choose the level of compression you want. Also I find the ZIP compression to be excellent too, better than a PSD.

EPS might be another alternative, but because you sometimes need third party software to even view them I choose TIFF for storage everytime. It's a matter of personal preference.

All said and done - when I'm producing graphics for the web a chosen TIFF may well be converted to a PNG/PSD and manipulated/optimised in FW & PShop before outputting as JPEG - depending on the workflow and what the graphic is intended to show and what medium i might use it in the future. 'Tis always better to have big graphic!

[katana_one]

I store flat high-res rasterized images, such as photos, as TIF files, but I prefer to save as PSD if the documents will have multiple layers.

Vector based images are always saved as EPS files.

In both cases, the master image remains unchanged, and web images are saved as JPG or GIF.

[timchuma]

My camera won't save images as TIF files though (as some of the more expensive digital cameras do.)

I don't want to have to go through hundreds of photos and covert them to TIF format.

Thanks.

[jimbeetle]

I don't want to have to go through hundreds of photos and covert them to TIF format.

Set up an action in Photoshop (or other editor) and batch them. Start it and go have lunch.

[limbo]

Set up an action in Photoshop (or other editor) and batch them.

See here [webmasterworld.com]

[katana_one]

My camera won't save images as TIF files though (as some of the more expensive digital cameras do.)

If that's the case, then just save them as whatever format the camera creates them as. Just be mindful of how much compression you use when saving derivative files as a JPG. The reason some of us use TIF format in the first place is because it is lossless compression, as opposed to JPG (working with JPGs you could be adding compression on top of compression - resulting in drastic drops in image quality).

[pixelkat]

The main issue regarding "quality", aka high resolution file formats, has more to do with inevitable image degradation common to web image formats. Both gif and jpg files are known as "lossy" image formats, where pixels are discarded or lost during the compression process of making the images smaller in weight.

While the .png format has answered that problem by being "lossless", with the added benefit of having transparency capabilities, called 'alpha channels, support for alpha transparency is very limited as a web format, mainly because IE, the most widely-used web browser, doesn't support alpha channels...and has little incentive to include that feature in future versions.

Those of us who are digital-only designers, who produce imagery for screen-viewing only, use high-resolution, lossless image formats such as tif for mainly archiving purposes.

With regards to image quality in the true sense of the word, I feel that it is my duty as a professional designer to preserve the integrity of any image at the highest quality level I am capable of producing, be it a 4 px gif or a 50 mg RAW file. Because, if I don't, it always comes back to bite me somewhere down the road during the graphic process.

Cheers,
Kat

[krieves]

I shoot all the photos for our website and the photos are also used for other printed marketing materials. I shoot everything in RAW and retain those files. I convert the RAW images to other formats as needed. If I manipulate the RAW very much with Photoshop, I'll sometimes save it as a PSD - they take up less room than a TIF. I'll convert to JPG if it goes on the web, or to a TIF if that's what the printer wants.

Most photo corrections (white balance, exposure, etc.) are done with Phase One's Capture One software. I like it much better that PSCS's RAW converter.

I always try to hang on the highest resolution original image that is available.