What format to save processed images in?

GSXRMovistar · 15 Jun 2007 at 00:17

Guys, I’ve been processing a whole bunch of photos recently (have a batch of 300) and have a question regarding what format to save my final processed images in.

I’m starting with fairly decent jpg images (~4500x2800, 5-6Mb in size), then after a little processing in photoshop I’m saving them in psd format where they can range from 16-90Mb each.

Now I don’t really need to keep the psds for details of changes, layers etc because if I ever needed to edit them again I can happily re-create from the original jpgs.

What I’m looking for is a final format to save them in which will retain quality without requiring extreme amounts of disk storage, any suggestions?

Thanks

Johnny|lucidcomposure · 15 Jun 2007 at 00:29

if file size isnt a problem then I would say full rest Tiff. Its what I do. however that is now a good reason why my hard drives are full. Your looking at about 30 / 60mb images.

divine` · 15 Jun 2007 at 00:29

Your best bet is probably just leaving them as Jpegs if space is at a premium.

If not, you can try TIFF, but they'll take up as much, if not more space than the PSDs do.

Tomsk · 15 Jun 2007 at 08:52

You could try png.

D.P. · 15 Jun 2007 at 09:05

GSXRMovistar said:
Guys, I’ve been processing a whole bunch of photos recently (have a batch of 300) and have a question regarding what format to save my final processed images in.

I’m starting with fairly decent jpg images (~4500x2800, 5-6Mb in size), then after a little processing in photoshop I’m saving them in psd format where they can range from 16-90Mb each.

Now I don’t really need to keep the psds for details of changes, layers etc because if I ever needed to edit them again I can happily re-create from the original jpgs.

What I’m looking for is a final format to save them in which will retain quality without requiring extreme amounts of disk storage, any suggestions?

Thanks

If you have started out with a jpeg then you wont gain any quality saving them uncompressed. So I would save them to the same jpeg quality, or alternatively shoot in RAW.

GSXRMovistar · 15 Jun 2007 at 10:06

D.P. said:
If you have started out with a jpeg then you wont gain any quality saving them uncompressed. So I would save them to the same jpeg quality, or alternatively shoot in RAW.

Okay just wasn't sure if re-saving them again in jpeg would reduce the quality further.

Also, when saving as jpeg what settings/compression ratios do you all use?

Thanks.

Helium_Junkie · 15 Jun 2007 at 10:17

I go by filesize normally. If I'm saving a picture at full resolution I save as a TIFF or a JPEG at 12 (highest).
If I'm saving for web I reduce the image size and change the quality until the pic is less than 200KB.

A.N.Other · 15 Jun 2007 at 10:39

As D.P. said really. As you've started out with JPEG, there's no point saving as anything else really, as you can't gain image quality once it's already lost. I generally save a copy of every image as .psd for further processing in the future and a copy as JPEG for easy distribution and viewing in windows. If I'm saving JPEG for anything other than for web, then I use quality 12 in CS2 (10 if I'm saving for web, as that gets file sizes to a sensible level).

freebooter · 15 Jun 2007 at 12:31

GSXRMovistar said:
Okay just wasn't sure if re-saving them again in jpeg would reduce the quality further.

I am no expert and was wondering a similar overal question myself but afaik resaving jpegs does reduce quality each time you do it.

One thing you can do with the psd files is make sure you flatten them if you don't need the layer info.