Any advantage scanning to TIFF?

[rxmd]

That's why it's important to keep a reference copy as a TIFF .

Usually reference copies aren't re-opened and re-overwritten. Hence losses from recompression are not a problem. If you can live with the 8-bit limitation and save at a low compression ratio, reference copies are a perfect application for JPEG.

 

[dmr]

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.

This is the way I do it for any kind of image I want to make a nice large print of. At 16 bits and 3200 dpi it makes a .tif file somewhere between 70 and 80 megabytes. I'm in the habit of saving the originals, then burning them to CD since they do take a lot of disk space, since you can then go back to the original without rescanning. I'll then work with a 16 bit copy in Photoshop .psd format.

If it's just something for web or a small casual print, I'll scan directly to .jpg at 8 bits.

 

[iml]

I scan 16 bit grayscale TIFFs, do any required levels adjustment and cropping, and then downsample to 8 bit TIFF at the end. I then apply USM and save as JPG for web use, and keep the TIFF for printing.

I have directly compared images scanned at 8 bit to those scanned at 16 bits and later converted to 8 bit, and with my scanner (Epson V700), the differences are subtle, but apparent. I don't scan colour so I don't know whether things are different there.

I don't scan to JPG because, even at highest quality, I can't see any compelling reason for using a lossy format as my primary digital storage medium, no matter how good it is. Disk space is cheap nowadays, and I only scan a small fraction of my negatives anyway.

-- Ian

 

[nightfly]

I scan into Photoshop using Epsons TWAIN plug in and save as a PSD. I can then add layers and do whatever I want. This stays as a 16bit file with all adjustments in layers. Only cropping and spotting is saved permanently.

Then I reduce the bit depth to 8 bit and the dpi to 300 and compress the layers and save as a TIFF for printing and then re-size and save as a JPG for web. Right before I print I sharpen but don't save the sharpen action. The JPG gets sharpened as the last step as well before saving.

Takes up space but I know that my TIFF is ready to print while my PSD is more like my negative that I can go back and adjust if I change my mind about something or want another version. File name stays the same for all versions with different extensions.

PSDs of the same file seem to be smaller than TIFFs. I tried moving to TIFFs for my layered files to store things in a less proprietary format but went back to PSDs when I realized how huge the files are.