File format for printing

[gturner]

I was wondering what format you guys used to print normal prints and basic enlargements with.

I have always burned large JPEG's from lightroom, giving me 7-10meg file, so even 50-100 shots can fit on a smaller flash drive or CD/DVD and the prints system doesn't clog.

Does anyone use other formats and why?

[Swisstony10]

The lab that I use likes a Tiff if I'm having anything big printed, but other than that, I'll send them a high-quality Jpeg for "regular" prints..

Russ

[teaking]

If your editing has been done and it is a final output copy for printing then JPEG is fine its bith depth will show more than enough and everything our eyes can pick up, paper and Inks I believe show less so your not going to gain anything from files with larger bit depths... +1 for JPEG

[digirebelva]

Unless the lab requests tiff I generally send them a jpeg saved from the tiff

[BCampbell]

The main advantage of TIFF is that it's 16-bit.

It's less lossy than jpg put as long as you save your jpgs at around 90%+ quality you usually won't notice the difference.

Note that if you shoot camera JPG you're starting with an 8-bit compressed file, so 16-bit TIFF doesn't give you much.

If you shoot camera RAW you're either 12 or 14-bit, so if you're planning to output to TIFF you should make sure you convert the RAW to a 16-bit format (16-bit psd or TIFF -- note we GIMP users don't have native 16-bit editing yet), and output to 16-bit TIFF. There's no really good reason to work with 8-bit TIFF unless your lab requires it.