Re: What is the best format to photograph in?

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This is what you wrote:

"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."

Although I do not know what kind of camera you have, this does not look
right to me.
If the size is indeed 3200 x 2400, the JPG file size should be at least 5000
KB if you set the camera recording for the highest quality JPG compression.



"Frank Martin" <pj@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:uGgbOUZxGHA.4444@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"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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