Tiff vs PSD?

[Dan Brown]

This has probably been covered previously, so please excuse me but what are the advantages and/or disadvantages to saving a worked image plus layers in a Tiff versus a PSD? I am using PS CS3 and bridge exclusively and have recently started saving my worked images in PSD just because it seems to cut out a step (converting to Tiff), then going back to it if need be. Of course, I also save my RAWs also. Part of the reason for me doing this is the fairly low price for storage currently.

Dan Brown

[Robert O'Toole]

Hi Dan,

As long as you are saving the RAWs for archiving and back up saving the working image in PSD is a good way to go and I agree about the cost of drive space. 1TB hitachi drives (bare) are down to $149.
BTW Since Adobe now holds the TIFF CR, with TIFF 6.0 you can save layers, channels, transparencies, everything possible with PSD. So I wouldnt be archiving in PSD.
Robert

[Dan Brown]

Thanks for the quick response Mr. O'Toole, but I'm kind of confused by your words. In your first sentence, did you mean "PSD" or "PDF"? I am not saving anything in PDF? If you ment PDF, could you elaborate on this? In light of the recent sharpening info (Richard, Lucy algorithims etc), I am not sure about anything any more!

Dan Brown

[Robert O'Toole]

Thanks for the quick response Mr. O'Toole, but I'm kind of confused by your words. In your first sentence, did you mean "PSD" or "PDF"? I am not saving anything in PDF? If you ment PDF, could you elaborate on this? In light of the recent sharpening info (Richard, Lucy algorithims etc), I am not sure about anything any more!

Dan Brown


Oops sorry about that. Yes of course PSD.

I feel the same way about the sharpening thread. This is why i like to keep things simple. :)

Robert

[Roger Clark]

I have a simple reason for archiving in tif versus psd. PSD is a company specific format. Tif is an open format and there is public domain software that will read it, and there is the highest probability that will remain so. In 50 years, will you or your descendants want to buy photoshop just to see what your images are? Will that future photoshop even read such an old format? For example, microsoft is dropping support for some older document formats. Who know if future Adobe management won't make the same decision. So I keep my images and documents in formats readable by public domain non-proprietary software. That includes tif and jpeg for images, and ascii, pdf and rtf for documents.

I also keep my image files in a simple directory structure and do not use proprietary database systems.

Roger

[Dan Brown]

Thank you very much Robert and Roger. I like the idea of "thinking way ahead". Dan Brown