Raw & Post Processing, Printing > Digital Image Processing

PSD vs Tiff

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genedel:
Can tell me the advantage/disadvantage of saving photos in PSD vs Tiff ?
Thanks
Gene

mikeseb:
I used to store all my working files in .PSD format. Then I read Peter Krogh's "DAM Book" on digital asset management. He points out that .PSD is an Adobe proprietary file format (albeit a widely used and well-supported one), whereas .TIF is an open format. Krogh maintains that, for compatibility going forward, using open formats is the better choice for the long haul. Quoting from memory here but I believe I have the gist of it.

Time will tell if he's right, but I now save everything in TIFF format except for digital-camera or -back originals, which get converted to DNG's. When scanning film I save in TIFF right out of the scanner.

It seems that TIFF and PSD files have pretty much the same capabilities; I'm sure someone will point out where I'm wrong.

Schewe:
Layered Tiffs (since Photoshop CS at least) using the TIFF-6 spec can save -EVERYTHING- a PSD file can save including layers, channels, paths, transparecy, etc. The only limitation to TIFF-6 is a max file size of 4 gigs/file...but it can save out images larger than the 30,000 limits of PSD files.

For larger images, the only format is PSB files that can store up to 300,000 pixels.

Layered Tiffs may not be supported by -ALL- tiff readers (although recent ones should) and some of the compression options such as zip compression may not be compatible with 3rd part tiff readers (such as ImagePrint) but -THEY- should be encouraged to fix that!

ericstaud:
In my experience, an image with layers and masks saved as a TIFF will be significantly larger than if stored as PSD.  It is not a direct relationship, but many 600mb layered tiffs I have converted to PSD's become 400mb in size.

I began saving my layered files as PSDs because of this.  I would guess that the PSD's would save faster, take less hard drive space, and open faster.

I would be interested to know if this would translate to less scatch space used while the image was open.  Anyone know?

-Eric

Schewe:

--- Quote ---In my experience, an image with layers and masks saved as a TIFF will be significantly larger than if stored as PSD.  It is not a direct relationship, but many 600mb layered tiffs I have converted to PSD's become 400mb in size.
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--- End quote ---

That would only be true if you were saving PSDs without the "Backwards Compatibility" option checked...Tiff out of Photoshop saves this by default. However, Tiff with zip compression will be the smallest saved file size without lossy compression.

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