resaving tiffs

[echoyjeff222]

A simple question for which I haven't been able to find a clear answer ... if I re-save files in lightroom as TIFFs (e.g., applying a color efex pro, which generates a TIFF file, then creating another TIFF file), does it degrade quality?

 

[john.margetts]

No. The saving will not degrade the image - your processing might.

Images get degraded when the file format involves compression which throws away parts of the image. Jpegs do that, Tiffs do not (Tiffs compress, but not by throwing parts of the image away) .

Sent from my 8070 using Tapatalk

 

[KmH]

Some, but not all, compression methods involve image degradation.

TIFF - Wikipedia
You can choose to use a lossless compression method on a TIFF file - Lempel–Ziv–Welch (LZW) - Wikipedia

You can also choose to save a TIFF file as a 16-bit file or as an 8-bit file. Reducing the bit depth also reduces the file size.

 

[Derrel]

On most d-slr images a .TIF or .TIFF file (lol, pedantic much?) is quite large...old Nikon D1 2.7-MP TIFFs were like 36.5 megabytes each, which was HUGE back in the days of 1-Gigabyte or 2-Gigabyte hard disks and old, late 1990's computers. Today's d-slrs generate MUCH bigger TIFF files, and there is a LOT of information in them.

The one issue would be in deciding to go from a 16-bit TIFF file down to an 8-bit TIFF file; not a smart choice in opting to throw away the 16-bit file in order to save disk space by mangling it and going to an 8-bit TIFF. There are a number of operations that can not be performed on an 8-bit TIFF file. If you have a 16-bit file, keep it that way if you want maximum potential editing options for the image.