Any advantage scanning to TIFF?

It depends on the output of your image. If you are not making an archive version or printing, only viewing on the web/monitor a JPEG will do. Size might be a factor also, TIFF files are much larger than JPEG. A TIFF has more bit depth, and is not compressed. A JPEG losses information(color, highlights, shadows, detail) due to compression.
 
So if I scan to TIFF, is that better to work with before saving to Jpeg? Or should I just scan straight to Jpeg? Size is not an issue.
 
I would definitely scan to a TIFF file. More data contained in the image will be stored in a TIFF file.
 
I've done a lot of comparison viewing of TIFF vs JPEG, and honestly only once have I seen any difference, and it was on a HUGE file from a 6x6 negative, zoomed in to a ridiculous extent. I doubt anyone would be able to tell the difference.
 
my lab prints from tiff files are much better than lab prints from jpegs.
even as small as 8x10 i can see a difference.

joe
 
there is not necessarily any advantage to scanning as a tiff then saving as a jpg.

There IS an advantage to scanning at the highest color depth your scanner can manage. If this requires saving as a tiff before converting to a jpg, then that's the way to go. Colors will be more accurate in the final jpg, even in B&W you can get a smoother gradient between tones.
 
Of course, if you use Elements, it'll be 8 bit no matter what you do.

Most printers 'round here convert all TIFF files to JPG before printing, too.
 
The main advantage I have noticed when dealing with tif files is ease of basic adjustments ... exposure, rotation etc. Due to a lack of memory my computer really struggles to do adjustments like these to any jpeg larger than 5mb. Once I have these out of the way I convert them to jpeg for the rest of the chores!
 
TIFF's are essentially "full data files" like a RAW film scan or a RAW digi shot. None of the data is compressed - hence the large file sizes. In other words, all of the pixels are recorded in the file - there is no interpolation of adjacent pixels as is the case with the various levels of JPEG "quality".

I am a Nikonian and 90+% a film shooter. I generally scan my film shots via a Nikon 5000D scanner into NEF files (which are Nikon's version of RAW). I can alternatvily scan them into TIFF files - and recently have begun to do so more often as I'll explain in a minute.

Alternatively, when I shoot my D-70, I can do so in NEF (RAW), TIFF or some level of JPEG. Only the NEF and TIFF files are "full data".

Now the film scan (NEF/TIFF) files are extremely large as the 5000D is a 4000dpi scanner. The digi NEG/TIFFs are much smaller (the D-70 is a 6.5+mp sensor). But either way, they are full data (i.e. there are no interpolated pixels).

Anything shot or recoreded in JPEG - no matter the "quality" will compact the data by adding interpolation. That is why the file sizes are much smaller - and why it is the format generally used for posting here in order to save server storage space.

Unfortunately, I have found that unlike PS CS, the newer PS CS2 (and I guess CS3) does not directly accept scanned NEF files (although it does accept digi NEFs!). So there is some file incompatability - partly as Adobe seems less supportive of scanned files and partly becase they and Nikon, which now has proprietary processing software of its own, are in a pissing match.

This is my reason for sometimes now using TIFF over NEF/RAW . When I want to share full data files (i.e. no interpolation as with JPEGs) then I shoot/scan in TIFFs. This makes the data more easily readable no matter which software my receipient is using. I've recently shot some family events where I wanted to share the files with others. By sending them TIFFs, I knew they could then bring them to get printed and yet also have the highest level of quality versus some form of JPEG.
 
Check out this article explaining bit depth, gamut, etc....

http://www.digitalphotopro.com/articles/2007/janfeb/bitdepth2.phpBit-Depth And File Formats

"Speaking of JPEG, be aware that this file format doesn’t support high-bit data, only 8-bit. So if you’re concerned about getting high-bit data out of your D-SLR, you have to shoot RAW. Many users recognize that Photoshop can convert an 8-bit file to 16-bit and wonder if that provides any advantages. Unfortunately, no.

If you started with a high-bit file and converted to 8-bit, the additional data is thrown away; you can’t get it back. The reason Photoshop allows such conversions are situations where you might build a composite and paste an 8-bit image into a 16-bit image. This can’t be accomplished unless all the documents have the same bit-depth (and for that matter, the same color space). So while you can convert from a lower bit-depth to a higher bit-depth, unless you’re doing this kind of composite work, there’s no real benefit in doing so. Much like starting with a high-resolution file, if you interpolate it down and then interpolate it up to the original size, you don’t have the same original data."

Even though the article refers to DSLRs the scan isn't much different in terms of digital info.

To me TIFF allows much more in the way of shades of color in an image. The capacity to hold together more color information is greater with a TIFF image. This means when I go to print I will have more accurate color reproduction and greater detail, which is stored in this color information.

TIFF workflow is a little more processor intensive, and may not be worth the time for your application. If I were you, reading the different opinions, I would scan a couple of photos real quick in both file types, open them up, resize, and do some printing.
 
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Why make it an issue? Save as TIFF. It'll save more data than a JPG, as JPG is almost never entirely lossless (minimum compression is often 1%, which is little but still something). I save all of my scans as TIFF originals (or source files), and the images I worked on as JPG. This way I always have one version that has all the data I could squeeze out of the neg, without having to worry about data loss or accidentally saving over it.
 
I do the same. Scan and save the original as a TIFF. After making adjustments and eliminating dust spots, I save and set the file to read-only so I don't accidentally overwrite it. Then I make my Web version.
 
It's also worth noting that JPG files degrade the more times you save over them. the interpolation is in turn interpolated.
 
Scan as a 16bit tiff if your scanner has high bit depths - this is the scanning equivalent of a raw file.

Stay in 16 bit as much as you can, and use that as a master file to create lower bit depth output files for web/print/etc.
 
All my scans are (now) TIFF, then I convert to JPG as the final stage for viewing, printing on devices that do not support TIFF, etc. More data is always better.
 
depends how you will do the processing, k.
If you can do 16-bit-per-channel processing, not only 8, then definitely worth scanning to TIFF processing and only at the end saving as jpeg. If you only do 8-bit editing, then a high quality jpeg might be better (much less disk space).
In any case i would suggest to scan at a pixel size that is double to the final one. You can get better tones and resolution if you downsize the image (by an integer factor).

I also save mostly the oversized 16-bit tiff files for future; however they can get real big in filesize, and your disks can fill up real quick. A 2400-dpi scan of a 6x6 slide (about 5200x5200 pixels) occupies 200 Mbytes in 48-bit tiff, and only 3 Mbytes as 24-bit high quality jpeg. There's no visible difference on my monitor. Of course I made the jpeg out of the monster tiff.
 
The crucial aspect of jpegs is that you progressively lose more data if you open up the file several times to edit - the photo is recompressed each time, losing more information with each save.

That's why it's important to keep a reference copy as a TIFF .
 
Here's a couple of other notions:

- It's at least as important to scan with maximum resolution as with maximum colour depth. (We had the discussion here why this is the case; in a nutshell, if you scale the image down later, for every factor of two of downscaling in each dimension you get an extra bit of effective colour depth, because when you combine four pixels into one you are effectively multisampling.)

- Saving full-resolution 16-bit TIFFs takes incredible amounts of space, which make backup solutions a challenge in the long run. At least 1/4 of those files is random noise where the upper bits of the scanner sensor didn't get useful data.

- The lossiness disadvantage is overrated in my opinion. It's true that upon re-opening and re-saving of a JPEG there is a slight loss incurred, but how often do you reopen and resave JPEGs in your typical imaging workflow - two, three, four times? And what steps do you perform in between - rescaling, for example? That's why stating that "you lose 1% of image quality", for example, is misleading. If you choose your JPEG quality setting high enough, compression losses won't be visible to your eyes unless you re-open and re-save documents hundreds of times, which in real-world workflows tends not to be done.

- The main problem with JPEG is not that it's lossy, but that it is 8-bit-only. JPEG-2000 has a 16-bit mode. That's already preferable to TIFF IMHO because the compression is much better and the slight lossiness is not a problem, as outlined above.

- In the long run what would be desirable is a file format with support for arbitrary colour depths, or even one with 12 or 14 bits per channel. I have toyed with the idea of using EXR, which has a floating-point representation of colour and a wavelet compression mode, but there you still have support issues with software (you'd have to scan into a TIFF and then recompress).

Philipp
 
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