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Image Format FAQ
There
has been so many questions about this, I feel like I need to
create a "all on one page" FAQ guide.
Keywords:
save, photography, tutorial, free, raw, photoshop, saving, tiff,
jpg, raw, format, loosy, quality
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| Definitions |
| RAW |
RAW
comes directly from the CCD and produces a lossless yet considerably
smaller file than TIFF. This digital negative untouched by the
cameras processing (white balance, color and sharpeness adjustments)
RAW
is potatoes, some milk, butter and a pinch of salt (don't forget
the water).
|
| TIF
or TIFF |
TIFF
produces an uncompressed (non lossy) 24-bit per pixel image
with a rather large file.
TIFF
would be like reheating mashed potatoes in the microwave.
|
| JPG
or JPEG |
JPEG
uses a lossy compression algorithm (compressed) which produces
small files but keep relatively good quality.
JPG
is like "potato flakes": just add water, and you've
got mashed potatoes.
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| Burning |
| If
I burn a JPG onto a CD will it degrade the image quality?
|
No,
burning has no effect on the file itself.
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| When
I open a JPG, should I save it as a TIFF right away?
|
You
should only save your image if you have done ANY kind of editing
to it… including Cropping and Color adjustments. |
| The
images from my camera are JPGs, should I save them as TIFFs
before editing them?
|
You
should only save it you have done ANY kind of editing to it…
including Cropping and Color adjustments. |
| Saving |
| Do
I lose image quality each time I open a JPG?
|
Nope...
the "damage" is done when you save the image.
|
| When
I open a JPG, should I save it as a TIFF right away?
|
You
should only save your
image if you have done ANY kind of editing
to it… including Cropping and Color adjustments.
|
| If
I open a jpeg file, crop, edit, and print, but I do not save
it, am I damaging the quality of the image?
|
Nope...
the "damage" is done when you save the image.
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| Why
is it a bad thing to Save an edited JPG as a JPG?
|
JPG
is a compressed file format (unlike TIFF or PSD), which will try
to save space (kb) by reducing the number of colors and/or patterns
in a file. As an example, a file compression program would, in
a text file, replace the repeated words like « the »
by a special character « £ » basically saving
two letters for every word « the » that was in the
text… If saving « the » takes 3kb, saving «
£ » would only take 1kb
when you uncompress the file i twill spit out the word «
the » instead of the « £ » character.
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| Printing |
| Should
I save my images as a JPG for printing?
|
Some
online services (or machines) will only accept JPGs, If they
accept TIFF files you shouldn't use JPGs. |
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