If you are not going to do any further editing JPEG is fine (use a high quality setting). If you are gonig to edit further save the file as a TIFF at least until you are finished editing..

Always save a copy of the image before you start editing (best to save as a TIFF but a high quality JPEG will do also). Save this file unaltered somewhere until you are sure you will never need it again..

Stemcell wrote:.

After downloading my pictures from my camera directly intoPhotoshop and doing post-production changes, should I save theimages as JPEGs of TIFs for eventual printing??.

Thanks for the help.

Stemcell..

Every time a computer (including the camera) has to convert from an image in memory to a JPEG image, some information can be lost..

The JPEG format is handy for sending a *final* image to an online printing bureau, for non-professional and semi-professional purposes, because it's well-compressed and will use network bandwidth efficiently. It's "lossy." It's not really suited for keeping high quality images through all of the stages in the rest of the creative process..

TIFF images can actually be compressed in a number of different ways internally, including the JPEG compression method, so it is a bit of a misnomer to say TIFF is always better. But for the most part, most applications use TIFF as a way of saving all of the available information verbatim, so when you load it again, you still have all the image information you started with. It's (usually) "lossless.".

What you use for your own archival purposes is otherwise up to you. JPEG is like keeping 5x7 double prints in the shoebox. TIFF is (usually) like keeping the negatives in the little vellum envelopes in the shoebox. RAW is like keeping the negatives in a climate-controlled media locker. Of course bits don't degrade over time, but I'm just drawing a parallel between the relative levels of archival requirements..

[ e d @ h a l l e yc c ] http://www.halley.cc/pix/..

This worries me: where are we starting from?.

If the things come out of the camera as jpeg's then save them as they come and put on to your CD or whatever you use for back up. Make a copy for viewing and work on it and save it as near to the original size as possible..

No point in saving a compressed jpeg as a TIFF, because it will only waste space on the HDD but you can set the editor to save with minimum compression and that will be about the size you started from. This all of course, depends on the editor..

BTW I guess you'll only work on a few of the pictures (can't all be in need of repair) and so it won't make sense either to save a few as TIFF's (from the editor) if the bulk of them are JPEG's as saved by the camera..

Regards, David..

Save as JPEG's only when you are finished all processing. Save in TIFF if you think you might want to return to the image and continue work on it. Always save in TIFF for intermediate stages..

As people have said - JPEG looses information, but it's fine for the final product. I always recommend 100% quality setting for JPEG's on the hard disk, and perhaps 80-90 % for web images..

StephenG.

Fuji S9600Fuji S5200Fuji F30Fuji E900Canon A710ISPCLinuxOS..

You stated "No point in saving a compressed jpeg as a TIFF, because it will only waste space on the HDD but you can set the editor to save with minimum compression and that will be about the size you started from.".

My workflow is to bring the jpegs to the pc, do a keep/notkeep sort, then any pp, then save any keepers as tiffs. all of the original jpegs(untouched) go into my jpeg holdall folder for future need if any. any work is done off the tiff of the shot. this guerentees that even by accident the original shot remain untouched and can be restored if need be. I always work from the tiff. as for storage space that is what my 2 300gb ext hdr drvs are for.

Storage space is cheap...