Which is better - prints from Photoshop or JPEG?

[ted_smith]

Hi

I am currently preparing a set of shots I did for my friends cats. I have prepared them all with The GIMP (xcf files) and now need to consider printing (I can easily convert them to Photoshop format).

Almost all of the commercial prinitng firms seem to require JPEG formatting when submitting your files for print. ASDA's print service is an example. Likewise, the highly recommended Peak Imaging in Sheffield also require the same.

I'm not massively experienced at printing from digital (being a film photographer up until the other month) but as JPEG is a lossless format, surely, by printing JPEG you're losing detail that would be retained if printing straight from a Photoshop or GIMP file?

What should I do? Take them to "John E Wright" (who can print from Photoshop) or just convert all my XCF's to JPEG and get them printed at ASDA or Peak Imaging (by the way, is there a notable difference between the two IRO digital printing quality?)

My needs are 3 x A4 sized prints and 25 6" x 4" prints. Taken with Nikon D70s and processed from RAW at ISO 200 with a couple at 400.

Ted

 

[Digital Matt]

Jpeg is a lossy format, meaning each time you save, you compress it and shave off a bit of quality. Will you see this difference in a print from a high quality jpg? No, probably not. If it will make you feel better, most labs will accept tiff files as well. Tiffs use a lossless compression. The files are much bigger than jpg, but far less than that of a psd. For 4x6s I definitely would not worry about tifs. A4 and up, it's up to you. I personally send quality 12 jpgs from photoshop.

 

[Don Simon]

Same here. I keep my images as Tiff files for all processing, but then when I need prints I save as Jpegs at the highest quality setting. However saving as Jpeg is the very last thing I do with the image, and I only do it once.

 

[Garbz]

You wont notice much of a difference and if you do the jpeg can often come out on top. The reason being is much of the firmware processing done in printers is often done in jpeg format. Even if you print from a tiff, chances are that the printer may convert to jpeg while processing the data. Mind you this is not true for all printers. But the reasoning behind this was that since most of the data flying around is jpeg it made sense to process in this format since it would be fastest. Plus jpeg allows for colour gamuts to be embedded.

 

[RVsForFun]

...and your lab, pro or amateur, probably can't even print the full sRGB colorspace. I save all final JPEGs at 100% quality using my editor (PhotoImpact), and the files actually get bigger when saved at 100%. You can send TIFFs and PSDs if you want, but believe they'll be converted to JPEGs before printing, so I don't think it matters.

 

[ted_smith]

Thanks everyone. That was all I needed to know

 

[ksmattfish]

Prints are pretty cheap. Get some made, and see if you can tell a difference with your own eyes. Then you'll really know.