Why are my TIF files three times the size of RAW?

[dEARlEADER]

I'm loading RAW files from my D60 on ViewNX and converting them to TIF without any editing...

My average RAW are 6 - 9meg.... most all of the TIF's are 28.8meg after conversion..

I thought these were both lossless format's... why are my TIF's so fat?

 

[MACollum]

PP adds lots of information to a file that wasn't already there (how to display the colors differently, for example). If it were already there, you wouldn't be doing PP in the first place.

 

[dEARlEADER]

PP adds lots of information to a file that wasn't already there (how to display the colors differently, for example). If it were already there, you wouldn't be doing PP in the first place.

This conversion is PRIOR to any PP...

-Load RAW files onto drive using capture NX

-Select the RAW and immediately convert to TIF

 

[usayit]

Tiffs do have compression (lossless) as well.... it can be turned off. I do believe some RAW formats also implement some sort of compression (lossless). not to be confused with lossy compression of JPEG.

Perhaps you are going from a compressed RAW file to an uncompressed TIFF?

 

[Helen B]

A TIFF file has three channels of information per pixel; red, green and blue. A Raw file only needs one channel per pixel because the colours are calculated during processing. In addition, Raw files may be compressed losslessly as well as slightly lossily.

Best,
Helen

 

[astrostu]

What Helen said. Also, usually RAW is less than 16-bit (I think the best on-camera A/D converter is 14-bit these days). So 16-bits for 3 channels (R, G, B) takes up much more space.