PSD in Capture One

[Mike Guilbault]

Is there a reason why Capture One can't view psd files in a catalog or session?  I don't understand why, in a Session, it creates an Output folder put when you create a layered psd file, it won't show. Or it won't import/sync into a catalog.

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Is there a reason why Capture One can't view psd files in a catalog or session?  I don't understand why, in a Session, it creates an Output folder put when you create a layered psd file, it won't show. Or it won't import/sync into a catalog.

Hi Mike,

A 'PSD' is a proprietary Adobe Photoshop data file format. Only Adobe products can officially decode it, although there are some applications that use a reverse engineered attempt to deal with such files. For all intents and purposes (except a very few special cases like displacement maps and duotones) it is superseded by TIFFs, which is an open standard. I believe that even Adobe recommends to save as TIFF instead of PSD, except for those few quirky uses.

The matter is complicated by the more recent PSB file format which is a (temporary?) Adobe TIFF-like file version that allows larger than 4 GB file sizes. The people responsible(?) for maintenance of the TIFF standard are working on an official new BigTIFF format that will also support larger than 4GB file sizes and large (tera-)pixel dimensions. That BigTIFF fileformat has been submitted for a future standard update but is not yet officially supported as of this writing.

Cheers,
Bart

[Mike Guilbault]

that's explains it very well Bart.. thanks.  Bummer though.  I catalog (in LR) all my images as either RAW, Tiff for flattened files or psd for layered files. That way I can instantly tell if a non-raw image is layered or not. That's not going to work with C1. 

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

that's explains it very well Bart.. thanks.  Bummer though.  I catalog (in LR) all my images as either RAW, Tiff for flattened files or psd for layered files. That way I can instantly tell if a non-raw image is layered or not. That's not going to work with C1.

Mike, I understand the benefit of being able to identify the stage of processing from the filename/extension. I solve such things by staying in TIFF for both layered and flattened files, but add an identifier to the filename. Maybe you could consider something like 'filename_.tiff' for the flattened version of the 'filename.tiff' layered version, or the other way around 'filename_master.tiff' or 'filename_lyr.tiff' or 'filename=.tiff' or something like that for the layered version. The benefit is that TIFFs are much better supported across applications, especially non-Adobe ones, but you can still search and identify the final versions and the 'work-in-progress' versions.

Cheers,
Bart

[Mike Guilbault]

That's a good idea Bart. 

Question.. is there any difference in quality between a layered tif and a psd file?  Are there any differences at all?

[smahn]

You could also use Image Processor (or similar - I like Dr Brown's Image Processor Pro) to batch convert your legacy layered PSDs to layered TIFs. You can set it up to add the name suffixes Bart mentioned as well (ie, filename_lyr.tif).

[Paul2660]

That's a good idea Bart. 

Question.. is there any difference in quality between a layered tif and a psd file?  Are there any differences at all?

Personally I have never seen any differences, the psd will be compressed, and thus smaller on the hard drive.  With multilayer 300 dpi D810 or Phase One files, in 16 bit, I find I am quickly in the .psb size as CC will most times not store a file larger than 2GB on my setup as a .psd.  It will allow such a file to be store as a tif, but tells you there is no guarantee that the file will not be corrupt.  

.psb is a pain as I have never found a browser that will read it and give you a thumbnail besides Bridge, which I don't use often.  I prefer Breezebrowser for a quick look.  It will give a thumbnail for a psd, but doesn't even see the psb files, (and give an error).  

Paul

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Question.. is there any difference in quality between a layered tif and a psd file?  Are there any differences at all?

Mike, there is no quality difference. Tiff (current standardized version) fully supports layered files of various bit depths and with profiles, masks, and what have you, as long as they are not larger than 4GB. The only things that a PSD offers in addition, is some infrequently used features in some Adobe applications like being able to use the file as a displacement map for a Photoshop filter, duotones, and transparency in InDesign. TIFFs also offer several compression options that can help to save some storage space.

Quality is not affected.

Cheers,
Bart