For what it's worth I want to share this information with you. I took a short introduction to digital photography and the instructor shared something that surprised me. Some of you already are aware of this, so this for those of you who aren't. He compared jpg. vs. tiff. this way. JPG is a lossy way to save a photo. Imagine your photo on a piece of paper, beautiful. This is how it looks when you first download it ineither jpg. or tiff . format.
Here is what happens to a photo save in jpg. Take the photo and crumple it up...you just closed the file & saved the file . Now open the paper and smooth it out...you just opened the file. Not quite as nice as it was before you crumpled/closed it. Every time you open, close, save a jpg. this happens. After a while your photo will loose some clarity, become grainy etc.
As he explained it, this doesn't happen to a tiff. file. I don't know why, but it's not a lossy format. He advised using tiff. when downloading your photos and when ever you save them. My camera will only download in jpg. so I change the format right away.
Well, that's my information via my instructor. Hope I got this right, if not I'm sure someone can give more information and detail on this.
One last reminder NEVER WORK ON YOUR ORIGINAL!!!!
Exactly! There are two lossless formats to save photos in. One is TIFF, the other is RAW.
So eons insists on jpegs. So when I am going to post a photo here, I export a jpeg copy to a file which I use to load here.
Just a quick clarification - TIFF is usually lossless, but it doesn't have to be. PNG is another format that is usually lossless, but again, it doesn't have to be. This is because the specifications for these image standards allow the actual picture data to be stored in different ways. The default compression implementation in TIFF is LZW which is lossless, but other methods can be used as well.
To confuse the issue a little bit, there is a format related to JPG (called JPEG2000, extension .JPF) which is not a lossy format, but it's pretty new and your camera is not using this format to save pictures (if you're using JPG in your camera.)
The description of wadding up the picture and straightening it out is probably one of the more easily understood analogies that I've heard to describe it.
Thanks MC and Labrys, I was pretty sure I got it right, but it's to have you guys affirm that I am correct.
