massive iPhoto confusion

[frownsarefun]

I got this reply on the Apple Forums last night. I am trying to find out what to do with a pile of RAW and JPEG files I have and want to do some mild editing on iPhoto. This guy below swears iPhoto edits are all lossless and also that saving as TIFF is basically a waste.

My original question is simply...after I import everything to iPhoto, should I save all to TIFF first, then do my edits (rotate, crop, minor color corrections). Or should I do my edits and then save everything as TIFF.

The reply below:


" What I would do is:

1. Import the photos to iphoto.
2. Edit them.

That's it. If I needed to use one to upload, print, whatever, I would access it from iPhoto. Exporting them as tiffs for stroage is, frankly, pointless.

I'm not sure you've quite grasped how to an app like iPhoto fits in your workflow. It's a manager - like iTunes for music, AddressBook for adresses, it become the "go-to" app for your photos. Anything you need to do with your photos can be done either with or via iPhoto. And I do mean anything.

Also, as I said above, editing with iPhoto is lossless.

Import a shot to iPhoto. Fix the red-eye. A copy with the edit is saved as a jpeg.

Now edit it again. Say, crop it. With an editor like Photoshop if you do a straight save then you will have generational loss. You won't with iPhoto. Because when you do this crop, iPhoto goes back to the original and applies the aggregate of the two edits to that, and saves it in a new copy. (And dumps the old one). So, the Red-eye fix version and the red-eye fix plus crop version are the same generation. So, each edit with iPhoto does not cause ongoing deterioration of the image.

Of course, this does not apply to images edited with external editors.

And, at any point, you can simply revert to the original file if you want to.

Of course, you back up the Library as this backs up the originals, the edited versions and, importantly, the database as well.

If you want to migrate to another app at some point in the future: Simply export (in whatever format you choose, from Original, jpeg, tiff or png) and move on - or some apps (like Aperture) will import the Library for you.

Regards."

[zona5101]

No reason to leave the raw file format. Import, edit. enjoy.

Its only after you decide you want it somewhere else do you need to change its format. Send it to a webpage, to a lab for printing, in an email, etc. Then export it in the desired format and send it on its way. your raw file is still in iphoto just the way you left it last.

[Chip]

My understanding is the same as that of Bruce and the person who replied in that other thread. But - fair warning: I'm not too much of a techie, so I'll happily defer to someone with more knowledge.

When you import photos into iPhoto, the program saves every photo in an "originals" folder in your pictures library on the hard disk. And these photos are saved I believe in the original format in which they were imported. So, if you import 10 RAW images, all 10 of those originals will always be saved - and not edited - in the originals folder.

If you decide to make an edit to one of those, iPhoto will automatically make a duplicate of that original. You will make all your edits to this duplicate version, your original will remain untouched, and your edited version of that photo will then be saved as a completely separate version in a "modified" folder.

This modified version is the one that will show up in iPhoto, while its corresponding original will be "hidden" away in the "originals" folder on your hard disk.

So, while I don't think edits in iPhoto are lossless in the strictest sense, I do think that you end up in largely the same place: your original saved in its original format, always ready to be retrieved if you like.

I'm happy to be corrected if I'm off the mark.

[frownsarefun]

I just feel like no matter how many ways I try to ask the question, it never gets answered.

If my 10 JPEG photos are all taken in color and all all under exposed, for example - sure I had the originals, but they are worthless.

So after I import them to iPhoto, and change all these jpegs to black & white, and correct the exposure and have nice perfect images that I want to do something with - print, post online, etc - or possible edit again and again...I want them in a lossless format, and with as much detail as possible.

This is why iPhoto gives people the choice of exporting as a 16-bit TIFF file.

I simply want to know if I should import first, save as TIFF, and then edit - OR - import, edit and then save as TIFF.

Let`s just pretend that iPhoto forces you to save everything as a TIFF...let`s pretend - what would you do?

[graciousness]

import, edit and then save as TIFF

There is no point shooting in RAW if you are not going to do your editing in RAW. I think the issue is that you need to understand the power of RAW files and why one should shoot with it. You use a raw file to edit with because it gives you the best tool/power to control post processing. With any other image formats, you are very limited with what you can edit with your photos.

Here's a website that may give you an insite about it:

Tutorials – The RAW File Format

Raw files are not worthless. Lose your edited TIFF or Jpegs so long as you have your raw files, who cares. Lose your Raw files and now you are stuck with your edited TIFF or jpeg images as they are. Should you want to re-edit the images in the future, these tiff or jpeg files won't do cut it.

Does that make sense?

So keep your raw files. When you need to edit, make a copy of this file to work with. Not only are you working safer, you are storing the best files you can have as back ups. That is my belief anyway. Someone may come along and advice something else, but to me, it only makes sense to keep, work/edit with raw files, then save edited versions with whatever format you want.

[MidnightSWolf]

I think the reason why your question isn't really being answered is because no one practices what you're doing.

I can't say anything about the losslessness, because I'm not too sure myself, but I agree that saving TIFFs are pointless. 16 bit TIFFs are HUGE. You say that you want 16 bit TIFFs so that you have as much detail as possible so you can edit it again. But the RAW file will have all the detail you can possibly have, and it's always better to edit from the original. With iPhoto, it saves all your edits in a separate file, but doesn't actually apply them to your photo until you export it. Since it doesn't have another copy of the same (but edited) photo, it saves space.

If you want to edit the photo again, iPhoto will either add on your new edits with the old, or start a new set of edit instructions which will then be applied to the photo once you export it. If you're done with your photo and want to print it, then you export it. And once you're done with it, don't keep it on the same drive as the original and edit instructions, because it's just taking up space.

But to answer your specific question, if I absolutely had to save it as a TIFF, I would edit first then save. I'm not sure how much of a difference it would actually make. I was trying find an answer for that myself not too long ago.

[frownsarefun]

Taking a rather deep breath here, I really want to explain this, because with everyone`s responses (which I appreciate), I feel like it certainly is either my confusion or my lack of properly explaining.

With my Canon G10, I can shoot in JPEGs, RAW, even RAW+JPEG. In the beginning I would use JPEG because I was using the Auto Mode. So this is why I have JPEGs at all. After some reading, it was always nicely put that RAW files are much larger than, but are overall better - though it seemed some debate and preference was put behind each opinion I cam across. So after comparison, I switched to shooting everything as RAW files.

But my understanding from countless articles is that RAW is just like, literally, the photos 'raw' data taken right off of the camera with no compression or degradation - just the raw, untouched info - and all of it, nothing taken out. But also that a RAW file can not be used in that 'raw' state. When you want to dump it into a program - whether it is Gimp, iPhoto, Photoshop, Aperture, Lightroom - that the impending process of importing, editing and exporting - you end up with a changed format - not RAW. Sure, you still have your original, untouched RAW files hidden away safely wherever you store them (HDD, SSD, etc).

But when you are done working on an image that you imported, it gets converted/saved/etc to either JPEGs, PSDs, TIFFs, etc - something that is more commonly used for either web work, print work, etc.

I guess that`s really it. I know that iPhoto will take RAWs and does nothing to the original file. It simply makes a JPEG copy and leaves the original RAWs in their home place. But at the end of the process of editing this JPEG, it was always my understanding that I would want the highest quality exported image available because some people want an 8x10 made, some want a 16x20 or even a damn poster to cover a wall - and while I am sure that brings up print set-up and dpi, etc - you would still want the highest quality you can get of an image/photo - which for iPhoto seems to be a 16-bit TIFF, or so their literature says.

I have mild editing I want to do - rotating, cropping, some light color adjustment, But I don`t want to go thru Photoshop for this or Lightroom.

But with the school of thought seems to be whether JPEGs vs TIFF - there are a million articles about it. I never thought people would come out if such force against having edited photos saved as TIFFs, which made me wonder if I missed something in my situational assessment.

Sadly, I am better at taking photos than editing them. I suck on Photoshop and Lightroom. Even Aperture didn`t feel much more intuitive to me. IPhoto, for some reason does. While some may find that laughable, I want to get my photos out in the world to be seen - not spend the next 6 months trying to learn these programs. I can learn them in time, but after having them literally a few days - it is not an option right now.

[frownsarefun]

Also, I plan on keeping all my RAW files. I don`t believe I said they were destined for the trash. I have a Raw Folder, with every RAW file inside it. But they are not edited. Some need to be rotated. Some need color correction. Cropping. Be it however mild and maybe lots need no work at all.

An edited photo must be saved in some way, shape or form, yes? So of course I will keep the RAW photos, but they will have no editing to them, so I need to edit them and move forward. That is where this whole TIFF vs JPEG business came about.

I don`t want to print the version of photo which needs rotation, cropping and coloring correction. So the RAW is fine for safe keeping. But as an edited format, people save to JPEG, TIFF, PSD, etc all the time. Is what I am asking so strange?

[MidnightSWolf]

I didn't know that iPhoto makes a jpeg copy first. It seems strange that it would edit a jpeg instead of a RAW. I'm sorry if I'm missing your meaning, but my understanding of how Aperture works (which is similar to iPhoto) is that you import the RAW photo. What you see on your screen isn't the actual photo, but a preview of it. When you do edits to it, Aperture shows you a preview of what your photo looks like with the edit applied to it. However, your original RAW file hasn't been touched. Aperture has just saved a set of edit instructions. So by the end of it, you have the original RAW file, and a set of instructions. There are no JPEGs or TIFFs here. Then when you export it, only then does Aperture apply the edits to your photo, and produce a TIFF. Before that, the actual photo, and any changes you have made are kept separate.

Say you're editing 1 RAW file. You try 3 different ways of editing it. There isn't actually the original + 3 other copies of the same photo. It's the original + 3 sets of instructions. You choose one of the edits and export the photo as a TIFF. Now you get the original + 3 sets of instructions + a TIFF where the instructions have been applied to the original to give you your result.

I hope that made sense. And that it's right. If I said anything wrong, someone feel free to correct me. I'm really sorry if I'm still missing your point.

[RLucas]

Don't know if this will help or not as I use LR3, but if it's anything like this, when you import the files, what you see is the imbedded jpg from the camera.
As you make adjustments to the file, you get a visual representation of what you have done.
The changes are only applied when you save to whatever format you choose.
The act of importing does not change the file format. The only thing that changes the format is the export process. Even then, it is a copy of the original. No changes are made to the actual RAW itself.