Luminous Landscape Forum

Equipment & Techniques => Digital Asset Management => Topic started by: Mike Guilbault on December 02, 2020, 07:27:33 pm

Title: Is PDF a viable option for archiving digital images.
Post by: Mike Guilbault on December 02, 2020, 07:27:33 pm
I have a client requesting PDF format for archiving digital images. What are the pros and cons? Will a PDF retain colour and resolution?
Title: Re: Is PDF a viable option for archiving digital images.
Post by: digitaldog on December 02, 2020, 07:45:55 pm
I have a client requesting PDF format for archiving digital images. What are the pros and cons? Will a PDF retain colour and resolution?
IF just image data, NO! TIFF.
Openly documented image file format.
Title: Re: Is PDF a viable option for archiving digital images.
Post by: Mike Guilbault on December 02, 2020, 09:20:15 pm
I use Capture One Pro for my editing. I can export as a TIFF (8-bit) in ZIP format to bring the file size down, in this case to about 13MB as opposed to 7.5MB in JPG. I assume, since the file size is larger, the 'zipped' TIFF is still better quality than a JPEG. Would this be correct?
Title: Re: Is PDF a viable option for archiving digital images.
Post by: digitaldog on December 02, 2020, 09:23:57 pm
TIFF and JPEG are utterly different.
JPEG is not lossless compression. It doesn't support high bit data. No layers.
TIFF does all and more.
http://digitaldog.net/files/TIFFvsPSD.pdf
Title: Re: Is PDF a viable option for archiving digital images.
Post by: Mike Guilbault on December 02, 2020, 09:41:53 pm
Excellent article Andrew... thanks. I knew the basic difference between JPEG and TIFF but that article cleared up some other questions - and produced a couple more - lol.

I noticed that when exporting from Capture One, I only have the ZIP option at 16bit, or LZW and ZIP at 8 bit. Is there any noticeable difference between these options? As you can probably guess... I'm trying for the best quality at minimal size.

I should add that these images will not be edited any further so no need for PS. They're to be archived but also (likely) converted to a jpg for a digital display - historical display.
Title: Re: Is PDF a viable option for archiving digital images.
Post by: digitaldog on December 02, 2020, 10:00:31 pm
Thanks, but the key reason I provided it was so you'll keep track of possible issues with TIFF compression.
Just recently I ran into an issue with a very modern piece of software, Epson Print Layout.  It is able to load TIFFs with LZW or no compression but not TIFFs with Zip compression.
Title: Re: Is PDF a viable option for archiving digital images.
Post by: Mike Guilbault on December 03, 2020, 12:07:47 am
Good to know. I appreciate the information.