Re: What is the best format to photograph in?

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"Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@xxxxxxx> wrote in
message
news:h5ednQh3S7L-wXfZnZ2dnUVZ_qydnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Frank Martin wrote:
I have been advised to use "tiff" for
permanence but these files are very large
indeed (eg 25mb each).

If you're not a professional photographer,
you can
pretty well forget about TIFF format.
Moderate
compression JPEG files (10:1 or less) do an
excellent
job of preserving *relevant* photographic
information
and are perfectly satisfactory for most
needs.

Sometimes I have to take about 100 photos
in a session, so this can result in
storage problems.

Using .jpg format will cure your space
problems.

Is it possible to take the photos in
"jpeg" in the field, then download these
to the computer, and THEN convert them all
to "tiff"? Would this have the same
effect?

No, once a picture is compressed with a
lossy
compression method, the information cannot
be
reconstituted. However, as noted above,
unless
you have a truly unusual application, .jpg
files
will preserve all the detail you want.

If you have doubts, try taking the same
picture
saved as a .tif and as a .jpg, then display
them both side by side at 100% and see if
the
differences are important. I think you'll
find
that they are insignificant in almost every
case.

Similarly, would it matter if I operated
on the "tiff" files (rotating the image,
photoshopping, adding typed annotations
etc) and THEN converting to "tiff" for
permanent storage?

Forget about .tif. First, never overwrite
your
original .jpg files, so you can always
start over
with the originally recorded detail.

Second, if you want to do separate
"enhancement"
sessions in Photoshop, save the file in
Photoshops
native .psd format--it retains everything,
including
your layers, masks, history, etc.

Once you are satisfied with a photo and
want to add
it to your "collection", save it as a
moderately
compressed .jpg again (quality 8 or more in
Photoshop).

Purists will argue that you should record
everything
in TIFF or RAW mode, but if you're not a
professional
photographer, this is gilding the lily.

-michael


Home page: http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/

"The wastebasket is our most important
design
tool--and it's seriously underused."

Thanks. The photos I take with the camera
are pretty good for detail when I use the max
size (3200 x 2400) which have a size of
1500Kb each. Even without a tripod.


.

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