> 3072 by 2048 OK, I'll do that for my test. Damn, I wish I could afford PS7! > Yes, Photoshop 7, don't know about other versions. PS 5 went from QF 0-10 PS 7 went from QF 0-12 These "QFs" are pretty meaningless though: my recollection is that they filled in the gaps rather than adding "higher quality" settings. Using jpeg wizard I can save "hundreds" of different qualities: you can specify luminance / chrominance / sub-sampling independantly in fine steps. > Let's not forget though that lossless compression can reduce TIF files > somewhat, depending on the amount of detail, but it's not a big deal. I don't ever forget that. For most files LZW compressed tiffs offer some benefits. Personally I have reservations about compressed formats for archive: a one-bit error can make the whole file unreadable. For uncompressed RGB (or YMCA) data you just get a minor change to one pixel ;o) > Of course it would be lovely if I could save TIF files back into RAW > format for archiving. And that's why I save all my stuff as RAW files, Hahahahahaha Sorry, I'm not making fun of you - you know that's not possible: it would be a lossy process in essence regenerating a Bayer CFA array from an 8-bit per channel file. Actually, yesterday I wrote some VBA code (in Excel 97) to generate pseudo Bayer arrays from RGB images - just so I could experiment with some code to convert them back and then test how well they compressed after reconversion. [Thinks: does an Excel spreadsheet saved from Windows run on a Mac?] > and why Capture One is so great, because it remembers all the > manipulations you did to make a TIF and you can therefore easily make > a new TIF exactly as you did before, cropping and all. That is sort of what I wished you could do with PhotoShop. > A big problem with JPGs of course is they are only 8 bit files... It's incredible how many people still sing the mantra " 8-bits good, 16-bits bad". That is even odder than the cranky old farts that resis t going digital <grin>. 8-bits per channel was never a graphic design issue it was just a necessity harking back to the early days when most processors worked on 8-bit bytes (yes, I remember 7-bit bytes). Today there is no reason to at least not have the facility. It would need a new format - PhotoShop would need to be rewritten to handle it seamlessly ... and it goes on ... Bob
