Raw to Tif ??

I have been taking all my photos in Raw , but i only have photo-shop 7 and my photos are converted to TIF . Until i get a program to work with RAW , Should i shoot everything as JPEG ? Is there any advantage of TIF ?? Like i have noted before i am not very photo-shop Savvy .


Thanks in advance !!!!!!!

RobK.

Rob, TIF is an excellent format to work in. Since there is no compression as there is in JPEG format, TIF is considered a "lossless" format. It's what I work in all the time, regardless of whether my captures are in RAW or JPEG mode.

I'm assuming you are using the software the manufacturer provided with the camera to convert RAW to TIF?

Regardless of the conversion mode, once you convert RAW to TIF, because there's no longer any compression, the TIF files are much larger than the RAW and take up more memory. If memory is an issue, those external hard drives are getting so inexpensive it costs more for many people to fill their gas tanks than buy a 320 Gb or 500 Gb hard drive.

With my workflow, after downloading my card to the computer, I use Canon's image browser software to select which images I want to keep and to discard, and then rename the keepers I want to work on and do the conversion to TIF in Photoshop CS2. If you have a Canon camera, the DPP software bundled on a CD you should have gotten with the camera will allow you to browse and convert to TIF before allowing PS 7 to take over.

Thanks Steve !!!!

The Canon EOS viewer software that came with my 20D, is converting them to TIF .

Another possibility is to download to your computer as RAW, and then use Adobe DNG Converter (available for free from Adobe) to convert to a useful format.

Thanks Jim !!!!!!!!!

Hi Rob Here is what I have to say on this Tiff is a lossless format in other words no compression as you get withy JPG every time you save a file in jpg you loose pixels from your image as it will compress with each save Tiff doesn't do that Tiff would be the closest to raw` images keep in mind here as well if you scan images scanner to PC always save those in tiff format as well. For your original image files keep them in raw or tiff format .

One clarification for from what Glenn said - if you don't close the JPG in Photoshop you can hit save as many times as you want and it won't lose quality. It's the closing->reopening->resaving process that degrades.

Also a clarification in Glenn's good advice. When saving a working TIF file as a JPEG in Photoshop, it is automatically a copy. If my working file is "baldeagle.tif," when saving it as a jpeg it will be rendered "baldeagle.jpg," and that is a separate file.

Hey Rob, as a macro photogrpaher I shoot all my images in jpegs. I've heard and know about the compression thing, but have to tell you, I don't know where all my pixels are going in the compression, but my image print awesome, and I don't see the lose of quality from compression everyone talks about. I have never had a magazine, graphics company, advertiser, gallery, or print sale customer ever tell me they thought that a few pixels were missing I've printed images to 2 foot by 3 foot and they hold up very well. If I were a landscape photograper I would shoot raw to have more control processing the high dynamic range which I don't have a problem with in macro, as I control the light, and less problems with exposure.

Got RAW?
Them try the free RAW Therapee converter.
It does an excellent job with editing RAW files.

See, there really IS no such thing as lossless compression.