What format do you export your pictures to?

[James Cutting]

Evening all,

Just after some other people's opinions, as I'm interested to know what format people export their edited photos too. I always shoot in RAW, do any processing in Lightroom and export it to 'JPG', with the quality option set to '80' which made a big difference from the default.

When I was looking at the options, I saw 'DNG' and tried this, and was surprised by the jump up in quality after exporting - and file size!!

Be interesting to hear what others do

[igorski]

DNG is Adobe's Digital Negative format, it's basically still RAW but not camera specific.

[Mike s]

Export to photoshop as tff then edit and save as jpeg 11 or 12 quality
mike

[igorski]

Is there any difference between exporting as JPG using the top settings in LR or PS? Does '12' (the most?) = '100'?

[Mark]

Save everything as a TIFF. I have plenty of space on the HD these days...

[James Cutting]

Thanks all, so far - do you notice a difference in quality when exporting as TIFF?

[Mark]

Thanks all, so far - do you notice a difference in quality when exporting as TIFF?

They save as much bigger file sizes James and Tiffs aren't Lossi files like Jpegs. Flickr can handle Tiffs too which makes sharing to social media or here dead easy.

[James Cutting]

Thanks Mark, I'll take a look into TIFFs

[p6025]

do any processing in Lightroom and export it to 'JPG', with the quality option set to '80'

James,
LR export settings, including file type, are usually determined by what you want to do with resulting files. So what are you doing with these exported files?

Export to photoshop as tff then edit and save as jpeg 11 or 12 quality

Mike,
do you explicitly export from LR to and then open in Photoshop, instead of just using the 'edit in' options direct from LR; If so, why?


Paul.

[James Cutting]

Hi Paul, primarily, I upload to Flickr and Facebook, but other than that, that's really it I guess.

[p6025]

James,
Are you uploading 'full size' files to Flickr/Facebook?

Not particularly familiar with Flickr, but their help pages says they only support uploading of JPEG, PNG and (non-animated) GIF image files, anything else is automatically converted to JPEG. I would assume the automatic conversion result would be less favourable than uploading a LR exported JPEG which you have control over (i.e. compression) in the first place.

Facebook again seems to upload only JPEG, PNG and GIF formats. It has its own standards for image sizes and automatically resizes/compresses as it sees fit if you upload a different size. They recommend image widths of 720 px, 960 px or 2048 px, last I saw.


Paul.

[Mark]

Paul,

I've been exporting to Flickr as Tiff's for a few years and the quality seems perfect regardless what the Flickr bods do to the image while its uploading.

Rgds

Mark

[p6025]

I've been exporting to Flickr as Tiff's for a few years and the quality seems perfect regardless what the Flickr bods do to the image while its uploading.

Mark,
I wouldn't argue. Did a test (TIFF export 8bit, sRGB, no compression) and I see no meaningful difference (file size or quality) in the full size JPEGs Flickr saves; whether I upload a comparable TIFF or JPEG original. I would guestimate the Flickr JPEG from TIFF file comes out akin to the LR JPEG with quality setting around 90. Frankly this was better than I expected. But it does not look like going via TIFF gains you anything over JPEG, other than a longer upload time (if you don't use TIFF compression) though inconsequential time-wise that may be. Flickr tweak their algorithm at any time for their TIFF to JPEG conversion, at least using JPEG files you have (some) control as they uploaded 'asis'.

Obviously you should do whatever works for you. I just don't see anything advantageous in using TIFF over JPEG in this case.


Paul.

[Mark]

I've been exporting to Flickr as Tiff's for a few years and the quality seems perfect regardless what the Flickr bods do to the image while its uploading.

Mark,
I wouldn't argue. Did a test (TIFF: 8bit, sRGB, no compression) and I see no meaningful difference (file size or quality) in the full size JPEGs Flickr saves; whether I upload a comparable TIFF or JPEG original. I would guestimate the Flickr JPEG from TIFF file comes out akin to the LR JPEG with quality setting around 90.

But it does not look like going via TIFF gains you anything over JPEG either, other than a longer upload time! (inconsequential though that may be).


Paul.

T
True enough Paul, for me personally I prefer to save all my work as a Tiff as I can go back to it at anytime and still have a large file size to work with. I only convert to Jpeg for any gig work that is being published or if I get an image request from a subject..

[p6025]

Mark, sorry I edited my post a bit, but I didn't change my conclusion.

True enough Paul, for me personally I prefer to save all my work as a Tiff as I can go back to it at anytime and still have a large file size to work with. I only convert to Jpeg for any gig work that is being published or if I get an image request from a subject..

Whatever works for you. Perhaps a slight tangent, if you are using an LR based workflow why save TIFFs (or anything!); are you deleting original (RAW) files?! (and those TIFFs are 16-bit right?)


Paul.

[Mark]

Mark, sorry I edited my post a bit, but I didn't change my conclusion.

True enough Paul, for me personally I prefer to save all my work as a Tiff as I can go back to it at anytime and still have a large file size to work with. I only convert to Jpeg for any gig work that is being published or if I get an image request from a subject..

Whatever works for you. Perhaps a slight tangent, if you are using a LR based workflow why save TIFFs; are you deleting original (RAW) files?! (and those TIFFs are 16-bit right?)


Paul.

I don't use LR at all, just Adobe RAW converter and PS. I keep the original RAW files and yes the Tiffs are 16bit, but converted to 8bit if saving to Jpeg.

A lot of this stems from my experiences with Photobucket 10 years ago when storage was an issue and I didn't save the originals. Now i'm left with a lot of old rarer images from 2005-2009 that are 800px wide and 250kb in size. I still cry myself to sleep at night over that, haha!!

[p6025]

I don't use LR at all, just Adobe RAW converter and PS. I keep the original RAW files and yes the Tiffs are 16bit, but converted to 8bit if saving to Jpeg.

Fair enough, makes sense to even me then . (Sorry, another 'but') If you are PS through the Adobe subscription thing, then there is no reason not to use LR IMHO

A lot of this stems from my experiences with Photobucket 10 years ago when storage was an issue and I didn't save the originals. Now i'm left with a lot of old rarer images from 2005-2009 that are 800px wide and 250kb in size. I still cry myself to sleep at night over that, haha!!

Unfortunate.


Paul.

[Mark]

I don't use LR at all, just Adobe RAW converter and PS. I keep the original RAW files and yes the Tiffs are 16bit, but converted to 8bit if saving to Jpeg.

Fair enough, makes sense to even me then . (Sorry, another 'but') If you are PS through the Adobe subscription thing, then there is no reason not to use LR IMHO

A lot of this stems from my experiences with Photobucket 10 years ago when storage was an issue and I didn't save the originals. Now i'm left with a lot of old rarer images from 2005-2009 that are 800px wide and 250kb in size. I still cry myself to sleep at night over that, haha!!

Unfortunate.


Paul.

I have the option, but have never, ever used LR. I tend to organise my folders etc. through File Explorer. Plus I don't make the same adjustments to every image, I always process individually and never try to process all the images from a single event in one sitting. There's something rather appealing about processing an Image from 5 or 6 years ago that has never even been opened..

[p6025]

I have the option, but have never, ever used LR. I tend to organise my folders etc. through File Explorer. Plus I don't make the same adjustments to every image, I always process individually and never try to process all the images from a single event in one sitting. There's something rather appealing about processing an Image from 5 or 6 years ago that has never even been opened..

It is a whole other topic... but LR Classic CC doesn't stop you doing any of that, arguably it just makes it easier.


Paul.

[Mark]

I have the option, but have never, ever used LR. I tend to organise my folders etc. through File Explorer. Plus I don't make the same adjustments to every image, I always process individually and never try to process all the images from a single event in one sitting. There's something rather appealing about processing an Image from 5 or 6 years ago that has never even been opened..

It is a whole other topic... but LR Classic CC doesn't stop you doing any of that, arguably it just makes it easier.


Paul.

Probably Paul, but i have my owm peculiar way of doing things I guess...