which one

[anthonyjb]

Tiff or Raw which is best and why

many thanks

Anthony

[Trevoreast]

Re: which one

I can't shoot in the tiff format.

I use raw - then convert to a jpg , if PP is required I convert to a 16bit tiff for editing in photoshop.
I'm not sure if that helps, with your question.

Trev

[colin C]

Re: which one

There is no best, just different versions of the same file, to use for different purposes.

If you shoot in RAW, you have a choice into what file format your convert your RAW (negatives) to. If it's one of your absolute best shots/ you may upload them to Alamy, or other similar organisation, or maybe you want to work on it in photoshop, before finally saving, then TIFF may be your best solution.

If you are only likely to view them on your computer, or make very small prints for friends, or upload them to a Forum or Hosting Site, then JPEG may be the best choice.

TIFFs can be very large files and if you have been using it in Photoshop and include different layers, it's quite easy to reach a file size of 100MB. You can appreciate that you will fill hard drives up rather quickly if you saved everything as TIFFs. TIFFs are also lossless. That means everytime you save the same file, it doesn't lose any information, so even though two pixels next to each other are exactly the same green, it records them separately.

JPEGs are compressed, so blocks of information the same will be recorded together and that make for much smaller file sizes. Also, every time you save the same JPEG, you lose a little more information. However, if you intend to regularly open the same JPEG, work on it and save it, it is better to keep the original file as is, work on it and then "save as" to create a new file. You can also save far more information on your hard drive as JPEGs, but I tend to keep the quality at maximum ............. just in case.

That is the straightforward answer. It can get a little more complicated, because their are other files as well, buit as far as photography is concerned, if you know the existance and properties of RAW, TIFF and JPEG, you won't go far wrong.

Colin

[anthonyjb]

Re: which one

Thank you Colin


Anthony

[MX5]

Re: which one

Just slightly off thread. Which format (like all standards there are plenty to choose from both de facto and de jure) you store your images as will in some instances be governed by how long you intend to keep them. There's no indication that Canon will abandon their second generation RAW format (CR2) but it may happen in 10, 20 … years. So for archiving purposes you may want to consider TIFF/EP (ISO 12234-2) or the quasi open standard Adobe DNG. But again there's no certainty these will survive over decades given history. [Mind you it was only a few years ago that my 8" floppy drive went to be recycled and the disks destroyed].

[anthonyjb]

Re: which one

Thank you MX5

Anthony