Tiff better for large landscape prints??

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shane1980

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Shane dennigan
Edit My Images
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Hello,


I'm wondering as in gonna be doing landscape work and thinking of printing large over 18-12 and bigger is it worth printing in tiff or jpeg I hered jpeg is fine for smaller prints but would I get better images with tiff with very large prints....
 
There's several schools of thought.....
1) TIFF is good because it's lossless and you get the 16 bit option.
2) High quality JPEG is completely fine as long as it's for transport (not edited). 16 bits are only needed for gross exposure correction. You will never spot high quality JPEG artefacts in a print unless the image is enlarged or edited and re-saved multiple times.
3) If you use Lightroom, avoid the problem and print straight out of Lightroom.

I prefer 3, then 2.
I only use 1 if I've explicitly been asked for TIFF and can't be bothered arguing.
 
Thanks for the help one problem I'm having with lightroom (current version) I'd when I export I resize my image eg to 8-10 inches but when I do this in photoshop cs5 it does it correctly as oppose to lightroom ??

Any idea why this is as I tried it with both jpeg and tiffs, the sizes are both different, I dint think lightroom is saving them properly the size I input??
 
Lightroom doesn't resize the image - in fact it never edits the original - It keeps recipe of what to do to the original.
Hence the printed size is part of the preset on the Print tab.

In Lightroom, printing is not the same as export.
Export converts the original into a new file with the recipe applied. Hence the original can be exported really small for email, medium for a web gallery or full size for transfer to someone else. You shouldn't need to use Export to print.
 
I'm exporting it as tiff to photoshop to resize and in some cases do further work but I understand what you mean now I don't print my images at home but in a lab that's why I export them I love to get a pro printer but that be down the line as I'm after a new lens currently.

You seem to know alot about lightroom I bet what features impress you most... I have to say I'm still learning but it's impressive software :-)
 
Ive printed a 40x30 inch print several times. It was from a JPG, infact the print house insisted on a JPG and not Tiff.
 
Shane - try this neat trick :)
Instead of creating a TIFF for editing in photoshop - create a PSD.
Unless you use a lot of layers, the file PSD size is smaller than TIFF; and if you do use layers then they can be saved as part of the PSD in case you need to come back and tweak them later.
As soon as you press save in Photoshop, it updates the preview in Lightroom - magic!

Also - my PSD is only 8 bit - WHAT!!!! I hear people cry.
My reasoning is that the gross adjustments and noise reduction has already been done by Lightroom using the full potential of the original RAW file - all remaining lighten / darken operations are minor tweaks and 8 bit wont matter.
For me, the reason for passing to Photoshop is to give the image a make-over (clone) and dusting of magic (adjustment layers).
 
Wow sounds amazing must try that, I hear some *** try ninga noise after exporting from lightroom what's your take on this software is it worth it...
 
Nope - not a patch on the noise reduction built into LR3 (LR2 wasn't so good).
I used to use Neat Image (similar to Noise Ninja) until LR3 came out.

Reason is LR3 knows about the light collecting buckets on the sensor (the RAW file) and isn't trying to smooth out pixels, it is smoothing out light collection buckets - these are not the same thing and knowing about the actual sensor gives LR3 a massive advantage.

Typically the light collection collection buckets on the sensor are not laid out in a rectangular grid like pixels and there may be more of one colour than the others - which is why the conversion from RAW to pixels is non trivial and why different software (ACR v DPP) sometimes produces different results.

LR3 noise reduction is really good - look no further...
 
Also....
If you are looking at large prints of landscapes - you shouldn't be needing noise reduction!
There's no substitute for proper technique.

I wrote a couple of chunky posts about how to achieve the best possible image quality through good technique in a thread about soft lens copies.
Those are the skills you need to acquire to produce large prints.
Please have a read and report back.
 
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