Joined: 30 Mar 2008
Posts: 1
Location: SW Colorado, USA
Posted: Sun Mar 30, 2008 12:41 pm Post subject: Best versatile, stable file format for slide shows, etc?
Greetings folks -
Lots of previous photo experience, but pretty new to digital, so here's the deal. I have just learned that JPG files are somewhat unstable. Does this mean only when they are manipulated and re-saved, or anytime they are opened/closed? So I have saved many of my best images in PSD after altering them, but my objective now is to create CD's or folders to use as different slide hows. My first attempt tells me that my laptop (new Dell XPS) doesn't "see" the PSD files, only the JPGs. So, the question ... after manipulating a file in PS, what file format should I save it in that is stable and most universally recognizable to different computers, etc?
Joined: 24 Sep 2007
Posts: 3515
Location: Haverhill, UK PS Version: Lightroom 5, CS4 & Elements 11 OS: Windows 8.1
Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2008 12:19 pm Post subject:
Hey highdesert,
The JPEG file format is lossy, which means that everytime you save an image as a JPEG, photoshop discards pixel information in order to keep the file size reletively low. Resaving a JPEG once or twice at a high quality setting isn't too much of a problem but by repeating the process time and time again you're adding more compression to it every time you save, which will ultimately ruin the image. Even considering these facts, the JPEG format is a great thing under the right circumstances, it can retain a great quality photograph and still keep the file size low.
If I were in your situation I'd consider using the TIFF format. The file sizes will be larger but TIFF supports a couple of important features that may be beneficial to you-
1) TIFF supports photoshop layers, when you're saving you get the option of keeping them intact (creating a larger file size) or discarding them and saving a flat version of the file (creating a smaller file size)
2) TIFF supports LZW compression, which unlike JPEG is a lossless compression scheme. You can choose to save with or without this compression. I'd always recommend with.
3) The TIFF format is widely supported by graphics software, operating systems and web browsers.
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