PNG vs. TIFF

Josh66 · Apr 25, 2012

First off, I searched and didn't find much.

Both are lossless. Which is better for photography? Film scans, specifically.

I was not blown away by PNG... It seemed to create a lot of artifacts upon editing... PNG sounds better on paper, but in reality I'm questioning my reasoning. I've been scanning in JPG, and realize that is bad. I need to find a new format. My choices are: PNG, TIFF, PNM, JPG. I really know nothing about PNM, but from what I've read it doesn't sound like something I want to use. I could be wrong.

Not really worried about disk space...

Thoughts?

edit
I wish I could scan to .xcf, lol. Maybe I can and just haven't tried hard enough...

Josh66 · Apr 30, 2012

No opinions on TIFF vs. PNG...?

KenC · Apr 30, 2012

Don't know a thing about PNG, but I've always exported from film scanners or raw conversion software in TIFF (uncompressed). Then I open the TIFF in PS and end up saving it as a PSD file. If I make a print, it's from the PSD. I only use JPG for web display. The TIFF files are pretty big, just like PSD files, but there is no loss of quality.

marmots · Apr 30, 2012

i say tiff because you can save your layer's with them in photoshop

Josh66 · Apr 30, 2012

I'm scanning some film in TIFF right now. Going to compare them to the PNG's I scanned earlier. File size seems comparable between the two.

Josh66 · Apr 30, 2012

What I'm doing now is scanning in TIFF, save as XCF (the original, untouched scan as TIFF, and the cropped/edited photo as XCF), then export to JPG. Seems to be working good for me.

edit
I have noticed that this method keeps the file size of the JPGs MUCH smaller than they were when I was scanning as JPG and editing that.

Selection_001 by J E, on Flickr

The same photo in three file types. The TIFF is untouched, straight from the scanner. The XCF had minimal editing - crop, rotate, levels, USM. The JPG is a full resolution (3200ppi - 2940x4410) export from the XCF.

Here is that photo:

2012043010 by J E, on Flickr

bhop · Apr 30, 2012

Between the two, i'd probably go with tiff. I just scan my film as full quality jpgs, it's fine for me.. If I do any adjustments, I save that version as a psd.

Josh66 · Apr 30, 2012

That's what I had been doing up till now, and really - it hasn't been a problem. I just figured I should be using something 'better' than JPG... PNG had some funky artifacts any time I cloned out dust that I've never seen before with JPG.

I used to use TIFF a lot in the past, but stopped due to file size (that was years ago, and file size is no longer an issue for me).

I think I may be able to find a way to scan in XCF (native format of GIMP), but the added steps would probably make it more complicated than just saving the untouched TIFF as XCF right when I open it. I am going to end up using a lot more disk space this way though (up to 3 files per photo - more if I save different crops)...

OscarWilde · Apr 30, 2012

I don't really know anything about PNG vs TIFF, but as per your last comment:

"I'm going to end up using a lot more disk space this way though..."

You could compress the folders for your old(er) shots? That way you create an archive that takes up a fraction of the space but no loss of quality...

(At least on Windows) You can put uncompressed TIFFs into a compressed folder and have them take up the space of compressed TIFFs and retrieve them later as uncompressed...

I just said "Compress" WAY to many times :lol:

Josh66 · Apr 30, 2012

Disk space isn't a huge concern at the moment. It may be in the future, but it will be a long time till I have to start thinking about compressing things.

I don't know how much smaller a compressed folder will be for me than the same folder, uncompressed. I guess I should try compressing my old pictures to see what that looks like. Compressing folders is pretty simple, but there are a lot of format options that I don't really know, lol. Default is .tar.gz (Linux).

Josh66 · Apr 30, 2012

Hmm... I compressed my '2011' folder (it didn't overwrite the original - just made a compressed version of it). Doesn't look like it got much smaller. That folder did contain almost 100% JPGs though, so I guess they were already pretty small.

ScreamingMonkey · Sep 26, 2012

Both TIFF and PNG are lossless formats; therefore good for archiving. Both are open-source (well, TIFF's copyright is owned by Adobe, but its specifications are widely known and published).

TIFFs will be larger and are not supported by web browsers/e-mail clients, but are the most robust, fully featured file-type and will be around (supported) for many years or decades to come. TIFFs can do everything PSDs can do.

PNGs will be smaller and are supported by most browsers/e-mail clients. They do not; however, support layers as TIFFs do (for undoing edits), nor do they support EXIF metadata (the info contained in the file regarding when and how your photo was taken, such as the date, camera type, ISO speed & other metrics, and sometimes location if your camera supports it).

If you use a camera that saves RAW files, your best bet is to export the RAW as either a TIFF or DNG (Digital Negative format by Adobe).

If you want a high quality file that is smaller than a TIFF, viewable over the internet, and if advanced editing features such as layer support and ICC profiles, as well as EXIF metadata support are NOT important to you, then the PNG format is not a bad choice.

EliseLeveque · Sep 26, 2012

There are a couple of other things I would like to add to the ScreamingMonkey's exstensive post:

1. If you need to print your photos professionally, PNGs don't support non-RGB colour spaces so you might not want to use those

2. PNG is considered better for line-art as it was designed as a substitute (and an improvement) for GIF however they can support 16 million colours so they are just fine for most pictures.

On a side note, I am a bit confused about the statement that you got bad artifacts saving in PNG. PNG is lossless and doesn't degrade image quality.