TIFF vs PSD

[danaltick]

I've only read through Chapter 4 so far, but I've noticed that you use TIF instead of PSD, but at least in the first four chapters, I haven't seen you comment on that.  Please explain.  Thanks.

[peterkrogh]

TIFF is a more open standard, and therefore a better archival format.
Peter

[danaltick]

Well, I guess I'll switch to TIF then....learn something new everday.  Thanks.

[David Arnold]

Peter,

1) Do you save the TIFFs uncompressed, or using LZW compression. Reasons?

2) For my masters I've been working on them and saving them as PSDs, reserving TIFFs for hi res delivery files (JPEGs of course for lo res). This way its immediately clear from the extension which is which. (Delivery files are (a) sized, (b) if client requests it, sharpened, (c) if client requests it, in a different space than my normal Adobe RGB and/or converted to b/w.) Your thoughts on this?

David

[peterkrogh]

1.  I do not compress.  Time is more valuable than drive space.

2. Saving as PSD is not really dangerous, just might need to be migrated at a later date (so might some flavors of TIFF). Using the extension to tell the difference is not a great idea.  You might change your practice at a later date and then this becomes confusing.

Peter

[David Arnold]

Makes sense. Thanks, Peter.

David

[G-Force]

Personally, I find that storing master files as PSD has an organizational benefit. I know that any file with the PSD extension is a master and I don't have to included that as part of the filename. Plus I find that PSDs with layers are smaller than layered TIFFS.

[SeanD]

Plus I find that PSDs with layers are smaller than layered TIFFS.

Not necessarily. If you use the lossless LZW compression a layered TIFF file is often smaller on disk than if the same file is saved as a PSD.

--Sean

[danaltick]

Now that I'm working more in the derivative world, creating masters, I still had a few unanswered questions regarding TIFF vs PSD, so I did a little research and found this article http://library.wustl.edu/~listmgr/imagelib/Apr2003/0011.html.  Now my questions are answered.  In reading this, it's interesting to note the parallelism between TIFF and DNG.  TIFF actually plays a similar role to DNG in that it serves as a job jacket for different image formats as well as a flattened master preview...very interesting.  This article also makes it clear why one would want to use uncompressed TIFF for long-term archival.

I was actually having some trouble with iView getting it to display layered PSD files correctly.  I was doing everything right as far as saving with maximum compatibilty and attempting to view each layer from the iView "Media" view window as well as the composite view, but still no luck.  After converting to layered TIFF's with the embedded full resolution preview, all problems are solved.  I was also a little concerned that layered TIFF's might not be 100% compatible with some of the new features of CS2, such as smart objects, but I had no problem there; so it's definitely TIFF for me ;-).

On a side note, some people may be concerned with the larger size of uncompressed TIFF's, but I have opted not to concern myself with that due to the ever dropping price of disk storage and ever increasing storage capacities.  I also anticipate the majority of my storage will be consumed by Raw images anyway; not derivatives.

One thing to note though, if you use Illustrator or InDesign, I hear they are more compatible with PSD.

Dan

[Michael_S]

I have been hoping to look more into Illustrator this summer.  I have it as part of the larger Creative Suite 2.  When the academic Photoshop CS2 was $300 and the entire Creative Suite 2 only $100 more I decided to spring for it.  I knew I'd use Acrobat Professional.

Back to my point...does anyone have more comment or experience with integrating photographs in PSD format into Illustrator or InDesign work?  I imagine I might like to involve my photos with some Illustrator fun.  Thus, I'd like to make it as easy as possible for myself from a file format point of view.

Thank you all,
Michael

[purplemage]

I am a long-time Photoshop user. I'm new to Illustrator, but I've used InDesign. If the document you are creating in InDesign is image-intensive, you will want to use PSD files. This allows InDesign to "reference" the images (sorry, the technical term escapes me at the moment.) rather than embedding the entire image file. This reduces file size significantly, resulting in a more managible document.

It is possible that Illustrator behaves in a similar way, but I do not know this for a fact. It is worth looking into.

Having said this, it doesn't seem to make sense to change your entire archiving and naming systems if you aren't already using Illustrator or InDesign. Furthermore, if you find yourself moving into this type of work more and more, you can change how you save your images accordingly. Storage space is relatively cheap, so having an extra copy of some of your images stored in PSD format may not be an issue. I am not an expert on what happens when you convert from TIFF to PSD, but if there is no or little loss associated with this operation, then I'd suggest simply saving as TIFFs.

Does anyone out there know how the TIFF to PSD conversion affects the quality of your image? If so, please lend us your expertise. Thanks.

[peterkrogh]

There is no loss of quality with either format, nor with converting between the two.
Peter