Printing from RAW in LR

[John R Smith]

This is something which has been puzzling me, and I am not sure if I can quite get my head around the technical issues, or indeed whether there is an issue at all. Here we go, anyway.

When I finish the edits to a given picture, I export it from Lightroom as a 16-bit TIFF for archival purposes. Then, I will usually print the picture directly from LR as an A4, say, which of course is a considerable downwards resample from the original 39MP file. Is this a better method (getting LR to directly render the RAW file to print) than importing the TIFF and printing from that (or printing the TIFF at the same size from PS). Has anyone done any comparative testing on this, in terms of output quality?

Or is it all the same thing and it doesn't matter . . .

John

[PeterAit]

This is something which has been puzzling me, and I am not sure if I can quite get my head around the technical issues, or indeed whether there is an issue at all. Here we go, anyway.

When I finish the edits to a given picture, I export it from Lightroom as a 16-bit TIFF for archival purposes. Then, I will usually print the picture directly from LR as an A4, say, which of course is a considerable downwards resample from the original 39MP file. Is this a better method (getting LR to directly render the RAW file to print) than importing the TIFF and printing from that (or printing the TIFF at the same size from PS). Has anyone done any comparative testing on this, in terms of output quality?

Or is it all the same thing and it doesn't matter . . .

John

In theory it doesn't matter. After all, a TIFF is nothing more (or less) than LR's rendering of the RAW file, and it is lossless, so there would be no difference. I say "in theory" because software does not always work just as it should.

In any case, why are you exporting TIFFs for archival purposes? Why not just archive your LR files, or export subsets of photos as a LR catalog for archiving?

[John R Smith]

In any case, why are you exporting TIFFs for archival purposes? Why not just archive your LR files, or export subsets of photos as a LR catalog for archiving?

Peter

Because a TIFF is a TIFF, and it is software and platform independent. So in theory, anyone can read it up and print it, without having to have LR.

John

[DarkPenguin]

In theory it doesn't matter. After all, a TIFF is nothing more (or less) than LR's rendering of the RAW file, and it is lossless, so there would be no difference. I say "in theory" because software does not always work just as it should.

In any case, why are you exporting TIFFs for archival purposes? Why not just archive your LR files, or export subsets of photos as a LR catalog for archiving?

LR, up until the LR3 beta, could have subtle (or not so subtle) rendering changes as versions changed.  So you may want to print that tiff.

[JRSmit]

This is something which has been puzzling me, and I am not sure if I can quite get my head around the technical issues, or indeed whether there is an issue at all. Here we go, anyway.

When I finish the edits to a given picture, I export it from Lightroom as a 16-bit TIFF for archival purposes. Then, I will usually print the picture directly from LR as an A4, say, which of course is a considerable downwards resample from the original 39MP file. Is this a better method (getting LR to directly render the RAW file to print) than importing the TIFF and printing from that (or printing the TIFF at the same size from PS). Has anyone done any comparative testing on this, in terms of output quality?

Or is it all the same thing and it doesn't matter . . .

John

John,

When i started with raw files (nikon d700, Canon 300d), early 2009, i was used to work in TIFF (scanning transparencies). So i tried tiff versus the raw (with LR developments) and could not detect any difference in the print. I use a HP9180B for printing.

As a side note: It does matter though which application is used for the tiff to view it and print it. This has most likely however more to do with how given application has implemented color management. I also had a case where during the Photokina 2008 i gave a tiff file to print, and in one case, with Aperture they had problems reading the tiff file. They got it correct eventually, but i do not know how. So even tiff is not that universal i must say.
In 2008-early 2009, not all viewers were capable of reading 16bit tiff's, limited to 8-bit tiffs. That may have improved nowdays, but i stopped spending time on reseaching that.