Image File Format Thoughts....

[silverdoves]

This is a bit off topic but I've been reminded me of something. I've been taking a "digital file preparation" class this semester and we went through the whole "use tiff not jpg" thing and I understand why (compression makes sense to me) but I work for a photography studio and every place we send images to (no matter what lab or product) they have us send JPG. Is it b/c of the size? Anyway.
Also, somewhat related... if you have a photo, already a JPG image, and you're going to place it in InDesign, What is the benefit of saving as a TIFF first? I understand if you're working with the photo to save as a TIFF in the beginning, but if you've already saved as a JPG and the information has already been lost, what is the advantage? Is it just assuming you might edit it later and don't want to lose more info, etc... ?
I just finished editing a student publication that showcases photographers work, and no matter how many times we stressed that the submissions needed to be CMYK, TIFF and 300 dpi, we ended up with a gazillion 72 dpi (yet 20 something inches wide) RGB Jpgs. I changed them all to CMYK 300 dpi TIFFs before placing them in our magazine. Was this a waste of time?
Anyway... random ramblings of my mind.... Just for anyone interested in replying to this.

-SD

[rAyVoLvEz]

Tiff is lossless and jpg is lossy. Guess you got the compression part down already.

Is it because of file size? I would presume so, processing time, and... Technically speaking, the difference between using tiff and jpg isn't that visible to the naked eyes in the print product unless under some microscope viewing.

If your photo is already jpg, is there any benefit in saving as a TIFF first? The difference isn't big I would presume. I don't quite agree in the logic that you start with a lossy format, save it as lossless and so the loss is stopped at the lossless stage. What is lossy is already lossy. Moreover, back to the naked eyes point, you cant even barely see any difference in this case.

Might have been a waste of time if you ask me :P I would just dragged them into my indesign publication. Then upon final compile, in my press quality pdf settings, set doc to be converted in the cmyk colorspace and kept quality at 300dpi. Then view the pdf at 100% to see if the gazillion of 72dpi shots are bad. If not, leave it and job done.