Psds, jpgs, tiffs and dngs

[crockny]

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! I can't get a good work flow going. Say I spend an hour in photoshop making a photo just so ... and I need to send it to the camera club for projection on the computer ... and then later I want to print it on my Epson R2880, and still later I want to send it to a magazine ... and I shoot in RAW ... can you point me to a working method that doesn't become overly cumbersome????

[i speak in math]

You shoot in raw, good. Now upload the image to your computer. Process the image in your favorite raw converter (Camera Raw, Nikon/Canon/Pentax provided software,...). If needed, do additional editing in your favorite image processor (Photoshop,Gimp,...). Save as TIFF and highest quality JPEG. Send the Jpeg to the camera club, print the jpeg or tiff on your printer, send the tiff to a magazine.

[crockny]

Do you save your psd file in case you need to resize or recrop your picture for some reason? If I recrop or rework my jpeg, I'm losing info, right? Can I recrop or resize my TIFF without losing info? If I save them all I would have 4 different type files for the same picture - seems like a lot when you have thousands of bird pictures ....

[jdepould]

Generally, saving your PSD working file is good practice.

By definition cropping and resizing is discarding information, so keeping a full copy is a good idea.

[i speak in math]

Tiff is lossless. You can crop a tiff and resave it and it will be exactly the same (minus the cropped out part). There is no additional compression. Also, tiff can save layers, so if you change your mind about a particular layer, you can always go back and change it.

[crockny]

I didn't know TIFF could save layers! See, I knew I'd learn something new here ... thanks!

[dakwegmo]

Originally Posted by i speak in math

Tiff is lossless. You can crop a tiff and resave it and it will be exactly the same (minus the cropped out part). There is no additional compression. Also, tiff can save layers, so if you change your mind about a particular layer, you can always go back and change it.

If you're working in Photoshop though, why not use it's native format? Everything runs faster on PSDs in Photoshop than it does on Tiffs of the exact same file.

[i speak in math]

Originally Posted by dakwegmo

If you're working in Photoshop though, why not use it's native format? Everything runs faster on PSDs in Photoshop than it does on Tiffs of the exact same file.

I don't believe our servers are capable of displaying PSD files on web browsers

[dakwegmo]

Originally Posted by i speak in math

I don't believe our servers are capable of displaying PSD files on web browsers

Granted, but in what instance would you want to display a full resolution, layered tiff in a web browser? Tiffs are a great for a lot of things, but if I'm going back to work on a photo in Photoshop, I'd much rather work with a PSD file than a Tiff.