What format for digital developing ?

[SkyPipe]

Hi,

I want to send my photos for development(normal photo shop like standard colour) for the first time.

What format should I send them :-

a. High quality JPEG (~3MB per photo) ?

b. Tiff-8bits (~11MB per photo) ?

or

c. Tiff-16bits (~32MB per photo) ?


Which will give best print result ?

 

[ckiang]

High quality JPEG will do. Don't waste time sending TIFF files to print.

Regards
CK

 

[teL]

High quality JPEG will do. Don't waste time sending TIFF files to print.

Regards
CK

For enlargements, I would send a TIFF file instead. I had pretty good results with 18Mb 8-bit TIFFs (converted from RAW) up to A3 size with my Powershot G3 previously. But for normal 4R prints, I would think that JPG would be sufficient.

 

[Azure]

For digital labs like Fuji's FDI labs, JPG is more than enough, for sizes up to S8R. TIFF file will only slow down their workflow, as the lab software usually takes much longer to read TIFF files. A picture, well taken, of a reasonable 2Mp or higher resolution will NOT have any noticeable difference to normal human eyes.

 

[ckiang]

For enlargements, I would send a TIFF file instead. I had pretty good results with 18Mb 8-bit TIFFs (converted from RAW) up to A3 size with my Powershot G3 previously. But for normal 4R prints, I would think that JPG would be sufficient.

Well, no doubt you would have good results with TIFF, but there won't be any differences. My regular lab showed me 2 10x15" prints, one from a high quality JPG and the other from TIFF, couldn't tell which is which.

My advice to all would be : Don't be too obsessed with TIFF, RAW and all. As long as your technique is sound, a high quality JPEG can deliver very good results, even if it's as low as 2mp as Azure said.

Too many people have the mentality (and paranoia) that JPEG being lossy = bad. But it all depends on how you use it. On a related issue, too many people save their web files as JPEG-12, which resulted in 300KB or so files for a picture 700 pixels wide. This is not only unnecessary, slows down the viewer's loading, takes up your webspace, and don't offer a lot more advantages. For web based pics, JPEG-6 is quite enough. Some even go lower.

Regards
CK

 

[teL]

A picture, well taken, of a reasonable 2Mp or higher resolution will NOT have any noticeable difference to normal human eyes.

I agree to a certain extent. The size of the enlargement is also a factor that should be taken into consideration although for most purposes, the above holds true.

 

[teL]

Too many people have the mentality (and paranoia) that JPEG being lossy = bad. But it all depends on how you use it. On a related issue, too many people save their web files as JPEG-12, which resulted in 300KB or so files for a picture 700 pixels wide. This is not only unnecessary, slows down the viewer's loading, takes up your webspace, and don't offer a lot more advantages. For web based pics, JPEG-6 is quite enough. Some even go lower.

It depends also on the details that are in the shot and the sharpness of the details that is intended to be portrayed. While most pictures look fine even at JPEG-6, certain pictures with fine detail suffer from loss of these details when overly compressed. JPEG-6 as a rule of thumb is a good guide to go by, but ultimately, it depends on the balance between wanting to show detail vs loading time/file size/storage requirements.