converting TIFF to PDF

coooliiin · Oct 22, 2015

hey!

I'd like to print and sell my photographic work. I'm working with Lightroom and the highest quality I can export is the TIFF format.

However, I found this online company that acts as a 3rd party between my website and the printing companies worldwide (www.peecho.com). They take care of the printing and shipping once the customer click on a link on my website. it's pretty well made except that they don't accept the TIFF format. PDF would be the best choice, but after hours of commotion, I cannot manage to export my TIFF to PDF (tried many different ways, such a Print as PDF, Photoshop conversion, and other softwares.) Every time I do so, the resolution switches from 4000x3000 pixels to something way smaller. the file size goes from 70 mb to 10 mb...

it seems that the industry accepts widely the PDF as the HQ file format...

what am I missing?

thanks to all!

Dave442 · Oct 23, 2015

I usually only send TIFF files to someone that is going to further manipulate the image, like a graphic artist that is going to use the image in Illustrator. For printing I always send in jpg. I would hate to have to upload a bunch of TIFF files. The only time I go from TIFF to PDF is for a multi-page TIFF file to PDF document.

Derrel · Oct 23, 2015

You might just as well accept that a high-quality, large-sized, low-compression .JPG file offers image quality that is basically, indistinguishable from a huge,bloated TIFF file. You're only making this more difficult for yourself. You want an 8-bit print file for printing? I would make it a high quality .JPG image file.

Scatterbrained · Oct 23, 2015

coooliiin said:
hey!

I'd like to print and sell my photographic work. I'm working with Lightroom and the highest quality I can export is the TIFF format.

However, I found this online company that acts as a 3rd party between my website and the printing companies worldwide (www.peecho.com). They take care of the printing and shipping once the customer click on a link on my website. it's pretty well made except that they don't accept the TIFF format. PDF would be the best choice, but after hours of commotion, I cannot manage to export my TIFF to PDF (tried many different ways, such a Print as PDF, Photoshop conversion, and other softwares.) Every time I do so, the resolution switches from 4000x3000 pixels to something way smaller. the file size goes from 70 mb to 10 mb...

it seems that the industry accepts widely the PDF as the HQ file format...

what am I missing?

thanks to all!

I'm not sure where you're getting your information, but jpeg is the industry standard. There are some specialized printers that will work with TIFF files and wide gamuts, but most will want an sRGB jpeg. I sell images through stock sites as well as a few "art" sites and they all want sRGB jpegs. If you don't know who will be printing the work, or where, it's best to use the most universal format you can and that would be jpeg. It's also good to proof it and save it using the sRGB colorspace.

coooliiin · Oct 23, 2015

great! that's pretty straight forward and saves me a lot of headache... i've made some research before on the kind of files to send to a print company. TIFF and PDF seemed the standards. i'll go with jpeg then!

thanks to all for your time and help!

much appreciated!

The_Traveler · Oct 23, 2015

I just tried saving a semi-large psd as PS PDF and the options allow me to save as quite huge pdf.
I have never sent a pdf for printing and thus can't speak for the quality of the print, but you might explore the max quality options just for your own peace of mind.

astroNikon · Oct 23, 2015

coooliiin said:
hey!

I'd like to print and sell my photographic work. I'm working with Lightroom and the highest quality I can export is the TIFF format.

However, I found this online company that acts as a 3rd party between my website and the printing companies worldwide (www.peecho.com). They take care of the printing and shipping once the customer click on a link on my website. it's pretty well made except that they don't accept the TIFF format. PDF would be the best choice, but after hours of commotion, I cannot manage to export my TIFF to PDF (tried many different ways, such a Print as PDF, Photoshop conversion, and other softwares.) Every time I do so, the resolution switches from 4000x3000 pixels to something way smaller. the file size goes from 70 mb to 10 mb...

it seems that the industry accepts widely the PDF as the HQ file format...

what am I missing?

thanks to all!

per their website

For wall decoration and greeting cards, you can use PDF, DOC, DOCX, PPT, PPTX, PPS, PPSX, JPG, PNG and GIF. For books and magazines, you can use PDF, DOC, DOCX, PPT, PPTX, PPS, PPSX.

interesting options they provide.

Rgollar · Oct 23, 2015

I print photos into pdf sometimes with ABBYY PDF Transformer and it works great but its not a free program.

KmH · Oct 24, 2015

TIFF files, even 8-bit TIFF files, are a lot bigger file size wise than the same image as a JPEG.

Print labs have 10's of thousands of photos uploaded to them everyday and if everyone uploaded TIFFs they would soon run out of storage space.
Consequently, most print labs prefer their customers upload JPEG files rather than TIFF files.

As Derrel points out, humans cannot see the minimal difference between the same image printed from a TIFF file or from a JPEG file.

dennybeall · Oct 29, 2015

Did a quick restoration of a severely damaged 11X14 1930's photo and needed an 11X14 color print so took the file in .tiff format (83 mb) to Walgreens and they printed it with no problem. They do a nice job and it's cheap for those times when you just have to have the print now.
I think all the printers can take .tiff, they just don't want the huge file size.

Jim Walczak · Nov 9, 2015

I haven't read all the responses here so please forgive me if I add anything terribly redundant.

While I wouldn't use the term "industry standard", I too have ran into a few places that do prefer to work with PDF's...in fact I've had to fight with more than a few people over this as PDF often seems to apply a different color profile, making some subtle changes to the colors of my images. That said, while I can't speak to Lightroom (for what I do, I've never found that program terribly useful), there are programs that can do this. For example, Photoshop can save to PDF...and if you have Adobe Bridge and Photoshop, you CAN do batch exports to a PDF file (save multiple images to a single file). Also you can use Adobe InDesign to export PDF's. Likewise, I think you can actually use MicroSoft Word for this as well...I seem to remember having done it that way a couple of times over the years (although it could require a plugin...not sure there). Of course the best way is to perhaps just buy yourself a copy of Adobe Acrobat. I do NOT mean Acrobat Reader which is the free version of the program, but the full Adobe Acrobat.

This is probably a bit subjective and perhaps a bit jaded, however it's been my experience that a few commercial places prefer the PDF format, simply because it's easier for the idiot techs to print from...they can open the file in Acrobat Reader, hit print and essentially be done with it. A LOT of people are still intimidated by the likes of Photoshop and other such programs...on more than one occasion I've had to do some arm twisting to get them to print from Photoshop instead of Reader.

Now I would ask about your specific reason for using TIFF's to begin with. If for example you have some specific need to use Alpha channels, I can understand...I do a great deal of work in Autodesk's Maya and working with TIFF's in this way has a few advantages regarding textures and such (although these days I use PNG's just as often, if not more). That said, if you're using TIFF's simply as a matter of quality or something, you -may- be better off saving as a different file format right from the git-go.. I too am VERY reluctant to use jpg's for ANY printing purposes...for my photos, particularly where I'm doing extensive work in Photoshop, I'll save them as PSD files (to keep layers and such in tact), then save a separate flattened copy as a PNG specifically for prints and I'll create a third file which is a reduced size jpg for emails or display on a website, etc.. For image editing, I find a PSD file much more efficient to work with than a TIFF...but again I'm a Photoshop user.

Anyways, hope this helps!