JPEG, PSD or TIFF??

[jessethetico]

I am trying to get a good workflow going because I want to get into business with my photography but I had a question for you,

When you finish editing a photo in CS5 and you have a project that has multiple layers, and it has extensive work done... what do you do afterwards? I like to save a high quality JPEG for different reasons but what about a PSD with the layers added or a TIFF? I noticed on my preliminary tests that I've created huge (~1GB+) files as PSDs or TIFFs at about 500mb. My problem is that I have plenty of HD space but I can't continue creating files this big because it will eat away my HD space pretty fast.

What do y'all do? Do you bite the bullet and save these files in case you need them later on or do you just save a JPEG and call it done?

[OJS]

Good question and the answer all depends what you intend to do with them. I no longer try to sell anything so the final goes to a JPEG and I save the raw file in case of a new idea for it later. If you want to save the psd or tiff's, I'd consider getting a external hard drive with lots of storage to keep your large files in. This way you do not bog down your primary hard drive with files you may or may not ever use again.

[NJMurphy]

Memory is cheap ($50 USD per terabyte these days), and you should be keeping ALL your images on external drives anyway.

Also, there's really no such thing as a 'high quality' JPEG; it's a lossey format, so anything worth saving should be saved as a TIFF or, for a layered file, PSD.

[WRon]

I agree with Murph: buy a 1 or 1 terrabyte external hard drive and back up all your images on it. And, if you're the kind of person who wears a belt AND suspenders to keep your britches up, you also ought to back them up on CDs or DVDs. Purists say that the only way to back up is to use gold CDs, which are (a) relatively expensive, and (b) limited in the number of images you can put on one disk. Reckon it's mainly a matter of just how insecure you are about backing up. Personally, I've been backing up my images since about 1999 on external hard drives, DVDs, and regular CDs. Here it is 12 years later and the earliest DVDs are still okay - that is, I can still access the images on them.

[WD0P]

Like most serious photographers I am shooting everything in RAW format. I save all of these original RAW files on my several external hard drives. Any image file that has been worked on and modified is always saved in TIFF format. The only time I use JPEG is for the benefit of friends and relatives who may have the ability to utilize only this format. Ultimately my RAW & TIFF files are also saved to DVD's. One set is kept here at home & the other is kept in our bank safe deposit box. Eventually.....as recording technology evolves these files will have to be transferred to whatever the current media might be. But, at my age, that will have to be my children's and/or grandchildren's worry. Unfortunately I don't think I'll be taking my camera with me to where I'm going.

I am just now wrapping up a 6 or 7 year long project scanning all the photos in my possession....hundreds of old family prints dating back to the mid 1800's (even a few tin-types)....35mm and 2 1/4 X 2 1/4 transparencies (about 5,600 of them) dating back to 1941 and up through 1999 when I switched to digital format. In addition to that I transferred some 6,000 ft. of 8mm home movies (1936 - 1987) to DVD's, wrote hard copy descriptions of the contents and have prepared multiple copies of all these DVD's and filed them in DVD/CD albums which are just about ready to be distributed to our three sons. It took so long because I'd get so darn bored I'd have to take lots of breaks....sometimes a month or two....just to maintain my desire to complete the project. It's almost complete (big sigh).

[LouR]

For your own usage you should save them as TIFFs. PSDs can only be opened in Photoshop and do not leave a thumbnail image in folders. Sometimes you just want to view an image, not work on it.
For printing, use JPEGS. Some labs will take TIFFs, but others will not. Plus, a single layer JPEG can be easily resized for web use, making it a bit harder to "steal" because of loss of value. TIFFs retain their value.

[LouR]

Memory is cheap ($50 USD per terabyte these days), and you should be keeping ALL your images on external drives anyway.

Also, there's really no such thing as a 'high quality' JPEG; it's a lossey format, so anything worth saving should be saved as a TIFF or, for a layered file, PSD.

TIFFs can be saved in layers as well.

[rcarpenter3d]

I normally use uncompressed Tiff, the image size is very large, but most printers prefer a lossless format and tiff also gives you cross-platform compatibility.