TaoTeJared said:
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Tiffs are best as a the "final" print/save in a workflow - not at the beginning of it.
so if you are sending a file to be printed what is better TIFF or jpeg ?
D800 RAW vs. TIFF 16bit Question
(34 posts) (9 voices)-
Posted 6 months ago #
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Eric, TTJ and Ironheart: Thanks for your input again.
TaoTeJared said:
Tiff files do not retain the raw data. It is no different than making a print from a negative, and re-scanning it, then editing it.Hm, I think this is not a good comparison, because a re-scan from a print loses a LOT of information, first of all simply from the print itself, that is a fraction of the dynamic range of the negative, and then from the scanner. So there's two steps of destructive processing in between, while with a file conversion and even an extension of the dynamic range to 16 bit, with no settings applied, there should, and that's the point: should be none. And of course the larger data space should contain all the RAW data from the original. If they didn't they would need to be eliminated, and why (and how) would they? It's like cutting off a 3-ft.-wide table so it can fit through a 5-ft.-wide door.
TaoTeJared said:
Case in point - when you convert a NEF file, the white balance (and other settings) are set and applied. Therefor it changes the original tone of the file which can limit your ability to process it. If you WB Bracket a set of sunsets, the colors will swing across the spectrum. RAW files, you can change those back to Neutral (remove the WB) - Tiff files you can not do this.would disagree, in the sense that a RAW file implicitly already DOES contain a WB setting: the one of the sensor without any modification. RAW data are often treated like they were a mystical black box that contains all this information – which they are not. It's simply the unprocessed image data from the sensor in a 14-bit file, plus some metadata. There can't be more information in there than 14-bit per channel. And it IS an image file, so of course, there IS a color value per pixel, with a color depth of 42 bits, which implies that there IS a white balance, simply what the sensor measured. Even with a RAW image, the white balance doesn't do anything else than re-calculating, hence shifting this color information of every pixel, using an algorithm.
Now if I modify the settings and then convert, then the original data are lost and it's replaced with the new data. But if don't apply any changes (possible in Aperture and I guess in LR, too) and say "open with PS", you should, theoretically, just get a 1:1 copy of the original information, and hence be able to modify WB etc. the same way as with the original RAW file.
Now that I wrote this, I'm realizing that you wrote "can limit your ability to process it", and not that they do. I guess we're all on the same page here, just putting it differently, as Eric already said.
And yeah,
Ironheart said:
Try it out for yourself. Try noise reduction per and post conversion and be your own judge. Same for the WB. If all you are worried about is pulling data out of shadows, then the 16 bit TIFF conversion should preserve most of it. But try it and let us know.I already did that meanwhile. Better than philosophizing here for hours, I do get that myself. ;-)
One advantage of the Aperture editing over Photoshop is that the algorithms for the shadow recovery are a lot better than those of the Adobe Camera Raw module, so it's not really comparable. The advantage with ACR is that you can have the original file as a smart object, meaning non-destructively processed RAW. I'm not sure if how this can be done with a file linked directly from Aperture yet.
I'll post here if I figure that out or if I have results that are worth showing.
Thanks,
ChrisPosted 6 months ago # -
One other thing to watch out for is color space manipulation during the NEF to TIFF conversion. Depending on which converter you use it may be converting to sRGB or aRGB space, both of which are significantly less than 12, 14 or 16 bits. (even though it will happily store the smaller value in the most significant of the 16 bits) Google "linear raw conversion" for lots of juicy reading. Also this looks interesting as well:
http://www.nx101.com/dynamicrange.html
That's nx101 dot com if the link gods punish me. One other thing to note is that RAW file conversion is as much an art as science and it has improved significantly over the last many years. If you keep the RAW file someday a better converter may be available to extract data from it. And finally, a 36megapixel image would yield a 200MB+ TIFF file!
Posted 6 months ago # -
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I wrote a bunch of stuff and just deleted it since it can be summed up in an easy fact - Tiffs are in no way better or equal than Raw files.
Chris I'm sorry, but you are very mistaken in your understanding in the difference in Raw(NEF) files, what info they contain, and what you loose by converting to Tiffs. You are missing much information to build a better understanding. I could attempt to describe it, but there are loads of resources on the web that will do a much better job than I.
As I said above, as a final "print" they are excellent for that, but not for the beginning of the workflow. They are better than jpegs but not Raw files. I would put Raw files at the top, then PSD, then Tiff, and then everything else below that. There are other file formats that are arguably better than Tiffs and even PSD files, but they have either not caught on, or are in their infancy and not mainstream yet.
20 years ago, Tiffs where the default and were the best - technology has moved forward and that is not the case anymore.
Posted 6 months ago # -
TaoTeJared said:
Chris I'm sorry, but you are very mistaken in your understanding in the difference in Raw(NEF) files, what info they contain, and what you loose by converting to Tiffs. You are missing much information to build a better understanding. I could attempt to describe it, but there are loads of resources on the web that will do a much better job than I.TTJ, thanks for clarifying – will go look for some "enlightenmen" then on the web. :-)
As for the printing:
I did a rather extensive test with different file formats, resolutions and different labs a year ago. This is something I'd advise everyone to test it themselves, since then you believe it best ;-) Or maybe you even see differences. It's not that much of work to put together a file with some "critical" content, and it won't cost much, either.
Anyway, my result was, that while there is a huge quality difference between the different labs, even with the best lab I could not see differences between an uncompressed (TIFF) and low-compression (JPEG highest) file. Then again, I tested this only at the highest resolution (300 dpi), might be different at lower resolutions, but who cares, actually.
Posted 6 months ago # -
chris_weinert said:
Anyway, my result was, that while there is a huge quality difference between the different labs, even with the best lab I could not see differences between an uncompressed (TIFF) and low-compression (JPEG highest) file. Then again, I tested this only at the highest resolution (300 dpi), might be different at lower resolutions, but who cares, actually.
I have noticed the same for the majority of my prints. The only time I have noticed a difference is when the image contains large swing in gradations of colors - Tiffs are better for that as they have a larger bit depth than jpegs. Printers anymore do a great job in "filling" in color and smoothing it out as well.
When I send my stuff out, I just go with whatever the printer prefers and send along or embed the color profiles.
Posted 6 months ago # -
sevencrossing said:
so if you are sending a file to be printed what is better TIFF or jpeg ?Tif, psd, pdf, etc for printing. Jpg maybe for very small prints of snapshots.
A jpg file is a compressed version of the image. Depending on the level of compression, there are mild to severe compromises made in image quality.
More info (probably more than you wanted) here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.jpgPosted 6 months ago # -
R8R said:
Tif, psd, pdf, etc for printing. Jpg maybe for very small prints of snapshots.A jpg file is a compressed version of the image. Depending on the level of compression, there are mild to severe compromises made in image quality.
PDF is just a container format, which will then contain i.e. a TIFF or JPEG image. That's similar to .mov for video, the container format doesn't specify what codec is used for the file itself.
As for the JPEGs: As I said, just check it out yourself, it's not expensive to do. Just be sure you select an image that has critical stuff in it, i.e. shadow detail, highlight detail, all that. For around 5 bucks, you can do a pretty nice series of one, two three images that give you a good comparison.
When in doubt, why worry about it anyway and just send TIFF. For larger-format "artsy" prints, I always send TIFF. I doubt it makes a difference, but if it did, then I'd be ok. For this kind of print work, I never send batches of photos anyway, but one or two, and who cares if it takes 20 seconds or ten minutes to upload. Just don't worry and send the large file, done.
Posted 6 months ago #
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