# From RAW to saved format?



## Speedracer (Mar 12, 2018)

Operating System:Win7/x32
Exact Lightroom Version (Help menu > System Info):5
SORRY, am very, very new and lots of questions. So, we go to all the trouble of fine tuning the RAW picture but when we save it as .jpg isn't a lot of what was tweaked now removed? In order to keep as much of the peaks/tweaks that were done, what format should one save it in and yet is compatible with a number of movie/video building software programs? Thanks


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## Hal P Anderson (Mar 12, 2018)

Speedracer said:


> when we save it as .jpg isn't a lot of what was tweaked now removed?


No. Saving as JPEG keeps all your edits. What changes aren't you seeing?


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## Roelof Moorlag (Mar 12, 2018)

I think the OP is refering to image information that is lost in a lossy format as JPG. 
You can export as TIF but there is no need to. Your catalog does contain all edits you made and you can deliver derivatives at any moment you want with the quality that meets the purpose. Most of us don't keep these derivatives because you can make them whenever you need them.


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## Linwood Ferguson (Mar 12, 2018)

@Speedracer, I think the answers may be moving you away from what MAY be your real question.

In Lightroom there is no need to SAVE anything, as all your edits are saved in the catalog, and utilized exactly as entered, with no loss, with any output from Lightroom.

There is never a need to SAVE things -- only a need to export or publish them in various ways.  Think of these as outputs for a specific purpose.  So for example if you want to send to a printer, you might export a copy for that, and it might be in a specific format (JPG, TIFF), color space (sRGB, other) and output sharpening (or not) and resized (or not.  But that output  is just that -- for that purpose.  You can do it again over and over for different sorts of printing, or to email or for web pages.

You never need to save or export for the purposes of preserving your work -- it's just in there, that's the nature of Lightroom.

I see people all the time exporting a JPG and then importing back into lightroom for some sense of ... preservation?  history?   Not sure.  It is not a required or... with apologies to any such reading this... normal part of a Lightroom workflow.  Lightroom saves your original raw, saves all your edits, and applies them as needed. 

If that's not what you were asking, sorry for the tangent.


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## Linwood Ferguson (Mar 12, 2018)

As a followup I should add that my answer is a bit different if we are talking photoshop as opposed to lightroom, that's a different situation.


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## Speedracer (Mar 12, 2018)

THANKS for the replies and no tangent at all. I believe Mr. Moorlag is closest in addressing my concern. I believe part of the confusion are the words "save" and "export" and my improper use of them. I guess what I am getting to is, I do all the tweaks and then I want to EXPORT them as "insert format here" so I can then IMPORT them into my Sony Vegas video software.  So in Lightroom, if I export them as a jpg then I would import them into Vegas as a jpg file. Would another format be better to export them as, in order to get the most detail that I strove to get accomplished in Lightroom. So, if a TIFF (for example) file would have more detail then wouldn't I be better off exporting them in Lightroom as a TIFF and then importing this TIFF file into Vegas. I hope this makes more sense to all that are reading . My apologies if not. Thank You..


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## Linwood Ferguson (Mar 12, 2018)

There are four dimensions to the question (at least):

- Whether you resize - smaller pixel dimension loses detail, larger pixel dimension can sometimes help smooth detail if the resulting display/print is much larger.

- What format - TIFF, JPG, etc.  JPG has a "quality" also, but generally is "lossy".  TIFF is lossless, as are many others.  But a high (12 or 100 depending on program) quality JPG loses very little detail.

- What bit depth - Raw is generally 12 or 14 to start, so JPG's (which are always 8) lose some tonal fidelity; TIFF can be 8 or 16 (or 32 bit that's not terribly relevant). You lose no more detail due to bit depth with an 8 bit JPG than an 8 bit TIFF.

- What color space: Intimately tied to bit depth in some ways, color space is how many colors can be represented.  So for an 8 bit TIFF or JPG, you can represent colors in Adobe RGB or Prophoto RBG that cannot be represented  in JPG -- HOWEVER, you give up fine steps between, so there are more shades of any given color (that is in both) in sRGB than in AdobeRGB.  So a near-uniform sky might show more banding in AdobeRGB than sRGB (a bit perversely as most people think AdobeRGB as "bigger" and forget there are still only 256 tones).  With 16 bit this latter aspect becomes moot as there are 65534 vs 256 steps. 

But using these is usually mostly constrained by the consuming program. For example, while LR may output AdobeRGB or ProPhoto RGB, many "things" cannot accept it as input, e.g. printers, displays, etc.  So you have to start with what are available inputs, then choose your output.

As general guidelines using 16 bit TIFF preserves most detail, and a wide color space preserves more colors (not sRGB), but takes a LOT more space for the file.  If you guess wrong it either won't display at all, or will be an "off" color.  Or... if the files are too big, it might load VERY slowly.  

If your target varies or is not well understood, JPG sRGB is ubiquitous, almost anything will accept it, and just do the quality at the highest (or a small step down often saves a lot of space with no visible degradation).


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## Tony Jay (Mar 13, 2018)

Speedracer said:


> THANKS for the replies and no tangent at all. I believe Mr. Moorlag is closest in addressing my concern. I believe part of the confusion are the words "save" and "export" and my improper use of them. I guess what I am getting to is, I do all the tweaks and then I want to EXPORT them as "insert format here" so I can then IMPORT them into my Sony Vegas video software.  So in Lightroom, if I export them as a jpg then I would import them into Vegas as a jpg file. Would another format be better to export them as, in order to get the most detail that I strove to get accomplished in Lightroom. So, if a TIFF (for example) file would have more detail then wouldn't I be better off exporting them in Lightroom as a TIFF and then importing this TIFF file into Vegas. I hope this makes more sense to all that are reading . My apologies if not. Thank You..


If the destination of these images is for video purposes a JPEG image is fine for all your needs. To make things easy, just export a full-size image (by pixel dimensions) and if any resizing is necessary most video editing apps will handle that part with ease.
In any case, even if the situation with your app is slightly different it is simplicity enough to export another, differently sized image from Lightroom.

Tony Jay


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## Conrad Chavez (Mar 13, 2018)

Speedracer said:


> So in Lightroom, if I export them as a jpg then I would import them into Vegas as a jpg file. Would another format be better to export them as, in order to get the most detail that I strove to get accomplished in Lightroom. So, if a TIFF (for example) file would have more detail


First you should find out if Vegas saves all forms of TIFF, or just some. From Lightroom I like to save TIFF with ZIP compression, but my video editor won't take that compression type, so for video I have to use TIFF with LZW compression, or TIFF uncompressed. But usually, I just use JPEG.

Because there is the question of whether the benefits of TIFF can even show up in your video.

TIFF might "have more detail," but are you actually going to see every pixel of detail in the video? For example, if you took a picture with a 24 megapixel camera, that's around 6000 x 4000 pixels. Is your video 4K or 2K? If the video is 4K and you fit the entire 24-megapixel image in the 4K frame without cropping, you already lose 2000 lines, or 50%, of your image detail right there (since a 4K frame only has around 2000 horizontal lines of resolution). If it's 2K, the image loses 3000 lines out of 4000 lines of detail, even if you used TIFF, since the image has 4000 lines and 2K has just 1080.

The above situation is different if you plan to zoom into the image in the video. Then you might see the image at 1:1 magnification at some point, and then you would want to preserve maximum detail. But even then, you probably don't need TIFF, because JPEG at a high enough Quality setting is visually indistinguishable from TIFF.

The other factor with video is how long the image is going to be on screen. If it's only up for a few seconds, nobody is going to have enough time to see the difference between a TIFF and a JPEG at High Quality.

The final factor is that the video is going to be compressed, in the same lossy manner as JPEG, when you render the finished video out to H.264 or MPEG.

On the whole, there isn't much benefit to using TIFF for video unless you are working on a video with extremely high-end specs like Ultra HD (4K/8K, HDR, wide gamut), so if you're working on a more common 2K/4K Rec.709 color video production and fitting the entire photo in the video frame (not much cropping or zooming), you might as well save a smaller JPEG file at a high but not maximum quality setting, because you probably won't see the difference.


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## Klaas (Mar 17, 2018)

Ferguson said:


> ...
> 
> I see people all the time exporting a JPG and then importing back into lightroom for some sense of ... preservation?  history?   Not sure.  It is not a required or... with apologies to any such reading this... normal part of a Lightroom workflow.  ...


When you want to see your pictures on TV or with a beamer via a WLAN a HD-JPG (1920x1080) is present within a glance, while a RAW of 20 or more MB or a TIF of 120 MB needs several frustrating seconds to show up.

Klaas


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