Destruction

[Tony Hubcaps]

My workflow from raw to print is a bit messy because there are some things I like to do in Lightroom
and some things in CS5.

E.g., the crop tool is excellent in LR, pretty rubbish in PS.

I'm wondering how destructive the process of moving a TIFF file between applications is...

Let's say I have a TIFF file recently out of PS.  I import into LR, do nothing but crop it, then export,
i.e. resave, the TIFF file.

Have I lost any IQ doing this??  What do people think?

Thanks

[Christoph C. Feldhaim]

My workflow from raw to print is a bit messy because there are some things I like to do in Lightroom
and some things in CS5.

E.g., the crop tool is excellent in LR, pretty rubbish in PS.

I'm wondering how destructive the process of moving a TIFF file between applications is...

Let's say I have a TIFF file recently out of PS.  I import into LR, do nothing but crop it, then export,
i.e. resave, the TIFF file.

Have I lost any IQ doing this??  What do people think?

Thanks

Since you don't alter any pixels with cropping I can't see what should happen to your file.
Exporting is another thing, but if its just a re-save - well - digital data usually doesn't fade when just pushing it around.
Cheers
~Chris

[Tony Hubcaps]

I suppose there's a question there... is "Export" the same as "Save" ?
(I just wrote it without thinking).

[Christoph C. Feldhaim]

I suppose there's a question there... is "Export" the same as "Save" ?
(I just wrote it without thinking).

I'm not a LR expert, though I use it daily, but I assume
if you don't choose any special options doing alterations on export you should be safe.
I can't imagine a thing LR could possibly do to the file.

[Tony Jay]

Tony, some information on saving different types of files.
Whenever you save a JPEG file the process is destructive because of the compression/decompression algorithms used.
TIFF files can be saved and reopened with NO degradation in image quality.

So, for your purposes, merely porting a TIFF image between applications, Lightroom to Photoshop, and back in your case, will have zero effect on image quality as long as the image is in 16-bit format and preferably with ProPhotoRGB embedded as the colourspace. I would never compress the image for this purpose either.

In the context, saving and exporting is the same thing since any changes made to the image in either application will be applied at a pixel level. If the result of any editing applied to the image in either application makes for a poor quality file that is another issue.
Nothing will be lost in the saving and porting and reopening of the file in another application.

Tony Jay

[xpatUSA]

In general we should perhaps avoid the use of the word "exporting", since it commonly involves a conversion of some sort. For example, raw date can be exported from RawDigger but only as a TIFF - in other words you don't get a choice, unlike "save as . ." in most applications.

cheers,