# TIFF vs. JPEG



## Unbroken Chain (Aug 31, 2012)

Folks,

Now that I finally have Lightroom, I have been scanning some of my old Kodachrome slides and "developing" them in LR.  It is lots of fun to revisit 20-year-old photos that I thought weren't very good but through the magic of LR can be turned into nice pictures.

My question relates to file format.  The output from my scanner gives me two choices: TIFF or JPEG.  In which format should I be saving my files?  An important point here is that the TIFF files are around 35 mb (read: huge!).  If I were to save all my slides like that I would fill up several hard drives.  Looking at TIFF vs. JPEG on the screen, I don't really see a difference (in some cases the JPEGs look better), nor does there seem to be a difference in how they develop in LR or in the LR controls available to me.

Is there a difference?  If so, what?

UC

P.S.  I understand the differences between camera RAW and JPEG and absolutely will shoot modern digital photos in camera RAW.  However, with these old slides, camera RAW simply isn't an option.


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## NJHeart2Heart (Aug 31, 2012)

Though i don't have a full answer, I have done a lot of scanning of old photos myself.  I output in TIFF because it seems to be more stable then jpgs with their lossy format.  However, I've played around with the settings to bring the file size down to a more reasonable level.  Can't tell you what the size is (it's still large but not huge) because I'm not at home but if someone doesn't answer your question satisfactorily I'll look it up tonight.

Dawn D.


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## clee01l (Aug 31, 2012)

There are two things that you need to understand.  TIFF comes in many variations.  JPEGs are fairly limited.   A TIFF file  can be 8 or 16 bit color. (Your camer produces 12-14 bit color RAW files.)  The more colors gradations  the more subtle the transitions and perceptually a better looking image.  TIFFs can be compressed or uncompressed.  A compressed TIFF uses algorithms to compact the data like a ZIP file to make the result smaller.  When you open a compressed TIFF file for further processing, you get back the original data that went into the compressed file.  This is considered a lossless file format. 
JPEGs are only 8 bit color and therefore LR  has less colors to work with to produce the a high quality image.  JPEGs are always compressed. Higher compression results in a smaller file.  The JPEG compression is different from that found in TIFFs. You never get a full recovery when you open a JPEG file In other words it is not lossless, The term used is called "lossy".  If you continue to process derivative JPEGs, after several generations, the degradation in quality due to lossy compression becomes noticeable.  For this reason, if a JPEG is the only original you have, it is imperative that you always begin fresh with the original JPEG and use a non-destructive editor like LR. 
If you have a choice for a source original, choosing the highest color lossless file format is the best option.  (FWIW, 35mb image files are not huge.  Im RAW in camera NEF is ~43mb and a 16-bit TIFF intermediate derivative is over 200mb.)


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## Victoria Bampton (Aug 31, 2012)

I'm in the middle of a massive scanning project too.  It depends on how perfect they need to be, and whether you'll still have the old slides around, if ever you wanted a higher quality scan.  

I'm scanning thousands of 35mm negatives, so they'd undoubtedly eat up a mountain of hard drive space.  My father was a professional photographer, so there are a ridiculous number of old family shots.  They don't have to be perfect scans, but they'll never see the light of day otherwise, and it's great to be able to tidy them up in LR.

For me, I've been scanning as TIFF, doing a quick bit of dust spotting in PS while they're still lossless, and then converting to the new Lossy DNG format.  A kind of JPEG compression is applied, so the size is similar to JPEG, but as it's a DNG there's no chance of me ever overwriting and recompressing (as there would be with a JPEG) and they're easily identifiable as my 'originals'.


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## Unbroken Chain (Aug 31, 2012)

This is interesting...a third option!  So does LR convert TIFFs to DNGs?  Maybe I should be doing this.  Just curious: how big are your TIFF files?

Okay, here's another question.  My understanding of LR is that develop adjustments don't degrade the quality of a JPEG, and that you only experience loss when you export, correct?  So, if I were to make hundreds of develop adjustments to a JPEG but only export it once as my final product, would there be a noticable loss of quality?  Or, does one only experience the file degradation if they save or export the same JPEG file over and over?

I now understand that TIFF or DNG is better, but I've already saved 400 old slides as JPEGs and I'm trying to decide if I need to go back and do it all over again...

UC


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## clee01l (Aug 31, 2012)

As I mentioned earlier, JPEG compression loses data each iteration.  If the original file (of any format) represents a data count of 100 units (I won't talk percentages because it is not linear or uniform from one file to the next), a compressed JPEG when reopened and uncompressed may only recover 80 units.  If 80 units is all you have on the second generation to work with, the additional edits will result in changes to that 2nd generation  which then gets compressed, losing data and de-decompressed as a 3rd generation and so on.  If on the other hand, you always start with the original (100 unit) image file, any derivative file (JPEG) will always be a second generation file.

JPEGs , even 1st generation JPEGS with a compression level of 60 (LR) or 10 (PS) will show no perceptible data quality loss, when viewed.  Only you can decide it the scanned 8-bit JPEG is "good enough".  Are these JPEG scans the most important family treasures or merely important historical images? Are you planning to destroy the scanned prints once scanned or retain them as an archive?  If they are being retained, you can always go back to re-scan later


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## Replytoken (Sep 3, 2012)

Unbroken Chain said:


> An important point here is that the TIFF files are around 35 mb (read: huge!).  If I were to save all my slides like that I would fill up several hard drives.



I do not know how many slides you are planning on scanning, but it is not always necessary to scan every file at the highest resolution unless you are looking to archive the digital file and consider it as a full substitute for the original slide.  If you are just looking to "preview" the images, you could do a "quick and dirty" scan at a lower resolution, select the ones that you want to post-process, and then re-scan those select images at full resolution.  This may save you some disc space, and more importantly, time.  Something to consider.

--Ken


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## Victoria Bampton (Sep 3, 2012)

Unbroken Chain said:


> Just curious: how big are your TIFF files?



They're about 2500x3500 to 4500x3000px depending on origin, so about 25mb-45mb as TIFF's, and 3mb-4mb ish as Lossy DNG's.  I'll still have all of the negatives, but I doubt I'll ever go back to any of them.

Clee's already explained JPEG compression very well.  The only thing I'll add is that converting to lossy DNG doesn't recompress them, just rewraps them.


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## GBM (Sep 3, 2012)

Well, I feel right at home in this thread...  I am starting a Kodachrome 2 scanning project and have been researching what software and equipment I need to do it ' right '.... Machines keep getting better and the prices keep falling.  What's not to love about that ?  I was a helicopter pilot in Viet Nam and with R and R to Japan for buying Nikon gear half price and Taiwan to see the ceramics at the National Palace museum I have about 1500 slides.  My father was also a professional photographer and career military and when we were stationed in Germany in the early 1950's made trips to Holland, Switzerland,Venice and around Germany.  Probably a thousand slides although some are not K2.  It was not easy to always use ASA 25 for everything. 
   So, while I am usually very frugal and would not spend this for a ' single project'  I figure these are not replaceable. 
Kodachrome 2 is harder to scan ' right ' due to physics... something about three layers, different dyes fading at different rates, etc... and they need some cleaning.  So after months of reading and watching Youtube tutorials ( thank you to all those going to the trouble of sharing their knowledge there ).... Here is what I wound up getting and some of the quirks of the situation. 
  The new Silverfast SE PLUS 8 and HDR combo... known as ' the archive suite' is almost always used as the standard to compare other scanning software to.   It hurt me to pay $310 ( DVD ) for it... but it has the ability to utilize my new ($180) Canonscan 9000f INFRARED scanning to measure dust and scratches in the K2 slides.   As compared to needing to physically clean the slides this can be used to identify and remove dust, dirt and scratches ( non destructively of course )... while doing that with wipes or liquids on wipes has the potential for causing non fixable damage.  On some I will be using both methods... the IRSD first and save all the data ... then attempt the physical cleaning and rescan. 
   As to Unbroken Chain's "However, with these old slides, camera RAW simply isn't an option."  is obviously technically true... I assume the spirit and use of RAW files is mostly in providing High Dynamic Range .... and the Silverfast is able to take a single slide and scan it to give HDR results.  Something one might want to research if it sounds interesting. 
   My Canonscan 9000f is listed as being able to scan at 9600 by 9600 dpi.    So when I first started I naturally assumed i would want the highest dpi it would allow.   I soon learned that my files were ( at the 64 bit rate available ) going to be about 6 GB.. yes, I typed that correctly..... I also found that Tiff6 is restricted to 4 GB files and that something called JPEG2000 exists ... which is LOSSLESS and can deal with larger files.... although in some cases artifacts are present.  
  Then I  learned that there is a point at which your scanner may can capture too fine a detail and be seeing the FILM GRAIN size... which would introduce fuzzyness into your picture.   I am assuming that K2 is one of the finest of grain sizes... and I have been advised that somewhere about 3600 - 4000 dpi would be appropriate for scanning.  
   As to this concept of having the full scan one place and only viewing and doing editing on a smaller ' preview' ... that is the default method in Silverfast Archive Suite.  Then when you want to save it takes the time to do that and you can be on the next set of slides while that works in the background. 
  I have not opened my Lightroom 4 ($129) yet.... it wants me to choose where to put the catalog and I am waiting for my 3 TB WD Mybook Studio scratch disc ( $180 ) to arrive.  Reports had said the Mybook WD were slower than they should be due to ' sleeping ' programs which acted too quickly and could not be changed... but the rep swore they owned some of the STUDIO models and they did not have that feature.... they are actually two drives ... each 1.5 TB ...and so you have the option of setting them up to stripe ( faster writing ) or mirror ( halves your HD size but gives you auto physical backup ) .  They also have the option of hooking up by Firewire.  My Lenovo e420 does not have USB3 which they also have... but I have a PCMCIA firewire card.... it will not be able to take advantage of the Firewire 800 speed in the WD MyBook... but will be faster than USB 2.0. and Firewire 800 is backwards compatible with the Firewire 400. 
   I hope I have brought up a few things people might want to research and helped someone avoid a mistake or two...


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## Replytoken (Sep 4, 2012)

GBM said:


> Kodachrome 2 is harder to scan ' right ' due to physics... something about three layers, different dyes fading at different rates, etc... and they need some cleaning.  So after months of reading and watching Youtube tutorials ( thank you to all those going to the trouble of sharing their knowledge there ).... Here is what I wound up getting and some of the quirks of the situation.
> The new Silverfast SE PLUS 8 and HDR combo... known as ' the archive suite' is almost always used as the standard to compare other scanning software to.   It hurt me to pay $310 ( DVD ) for it... but it has the ability to utilize my new ($180) Canonscan 9000f INFRARED scanning to measure dust and scratches in the K2 slides.   As compared to needing to physically clean the slides this can be used to identify and remove dust, dirt and scratches ( non destructively of course )... while doing that with wipes or liquids on wipes has the potential for causing non fixable damage.  On some I will be using both methods... the IRSD first and save all the data ... then attempt the physical cleaning and rescan.



A suggestion for your consideration.  I would strongly recommend that you purchase an anti-static brush or cloth.  Kinetronics makes a basic one, their Model 30, that sells for about $13.00.  This should eliminate a lot of dust without hurting your slides.  Yes, dust can be "removed" by software, but it is still better to start with the cleanest source material possible.  The software is not always perfect, and there can possibly be a slight softening to the image as it "corrects" the dust spots.

As a side note, you may want to read this article, and the linked articles in it, if you have not already done so:  http://www.imaging-resource.com/SCAN/CS9000/9000F.HTM .  I think that you will find it very useful if you have not already read it.

Good luck,


--Ken


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## GBM (Sep 4, 2012)

Thanks Ken, That is a good article... I had bookmarked it but had not read it carefully until you mentioned it this morning. Great info and I am glad they seemed to like what I had already bought... Looks like Canon slipped a little since they wrote that as my 9000f came with photoshop elements 8 instead of the new 10.  
    I tried to buy a camel hair brush in the camera shop when I was researching the Silverfast... but they were out of stock... I did get a 100 pack of 4x4 PEC*PAD non abrasive wipes ($10) and a four oz bottle of anti stat Film Cleaner for EEEEKKKKK ($29)!!!!!  by EDWAL .  PEC makes a fluid for cleaning but the camera shop suggested the EDWAL product as being ' kinder and gentler' on the film .. they ( I was talking to the lab people at the camera shop) use it for their cleaning process on movie film for instance.... 
    I will try to find that antistatic brush... sounds like a good thing... and I have air available.... 
Also, in case it stirs up other ideas in someone.... my father was a criminal investigator trained in processing finger prints.. and at that time ostrich feather dusting brushes were the standard for 'gentle'.... they are still used by some in that field... and although the duster that I played with growing up is gone... I have an ostrich farm 20 miles north of me... and I have been thinking about stopping by there to see if I can get some ' down '..... well, this is interesting :  http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/notes-on-a-feat-23575
Note---the EDWAL cleaner both smells bad and should be used outdoors in good ventilation.... 
Thanks for the suggestions Ken.  
 I am sure this thread will help someone in the future who has been putting off addressing their old slides....


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