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dextertangocci

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Apr 2, 2006
1,766
1
Hi everyone

I am busy scanning some old photos for iPhoto.

I just want to know, what is the best quality format to save it in: JPEG, TIFF, BMP or PNG?

I don't care about the size of the image, but just want the best quality.

Thanks!:)
 
Thanks!:)

Oh, and BTW, is TIFF COMPRESSED nearly the same quality as TIFF? Is it lossless compression?
 
ATD said:
A Tiff with LZW compression is lossless compression.



just a note...

.tif with LZW is definitely good, though I have had problems getting LZW to function properly with Windows. May have been peculiar to me, though, or maybe just an older version of Windows (as if newer would be any better)...

anyhow, just a thought
 
beatsme said:
just a note...

.tif with LZW is definitely good, though I have had problems getting LZW to function properly with Windows. May have been peculiar to me, though, or maybe just an older version of Windows (as if newer would be any better)...

anyhow, just a thought


I have never had a problem with it on a Mac, then again I don't use Windows. ;)
 
ATD said:
BTW a .psd file uses LZW.



really? hmmm...I wonder if that explains why the copy of Photoshop me dear old dad had on his PC always ran like sh*t...

yea I've never had a problem with LZW on the Mac either...funny how the Mac just seems to "work," eh?
 
beatsme said:
really? hmmm...I wonder if that explains why the copy of Photoshop me dear old dad had on his PC always ran like sh*t...

yea I've never had a problem with LZW on the Mac either...funny how the Mac just seems to "work," eh?



Photoshop was originally developed for the Mac, not the PC. I would like to think it's a better platform anyway. :D


 
Holy Cow...

ATD said:
Photoshop was originally developed for the Mac, not the PC. I would like to think it's a better platform anyway. :D



I just looked at your portfolio. I'm VERY impressed. Excellent work, sir.

Your XBox case design, btw, beats the crap out of the one they finally chose...figures. Microsoft...
 
beatsme said:
I just looked at your portfolio. I'm VERY impressed. Excellent work, sir.

Your XBox case design, btw, beats the crap out of the one they finally chose...figures. Microsoft...


Thanks :)


That was an intense project (XBox), I did 7 case designs and 3D renders overnight. I didn't know they went with any case.


 
Oops.

I by accident scanned 27 images in BMP format. Will iPhoto recognise it? If not, can I somehow convert it???
 
dextertangocci said:
Oops.

I by accident scanned 27 images in BMP format. Will iPhoto recognise it? If not, can I somehow convert it???

I dunno if iPhoto will recognize them, though at a guess I'd say it will. And yes, you can convert them, though if it were me I'd just re-scan them. BMP is kind of a crappy format...it's ok for low-res printing (printed tee shirts, for example) but for high-res it's not so great. Even if you re-saved the BMP files as .tif, you'd just be saving the original crummy information in a different format. If you have the time, re-scan.
 
beatsme said:
I dunno if iPhoto will recognize them, though at a guess I'd say it will. And yes, you can convert them, though if it were me I'd just re-scan them. BMP is kind of a crappy format...it's ok for low-res printing (printed tee shirts, for example) but for high-res it's not so great. Even if you re-saved the BMP files as .tif, you'd just be saving the original crummy information in a different format. If you have the time, re-scan.

Yep, once the quality slips you can't get it back by saving them into another format.



 
TIFF definately has the highest quality, but if you're not a pro (and you are not if you ask these questions) you wont probably notice a difference between it and a hughest quality JPG. :) JPG will save you a TON of space
 
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