Why tiff files are so large

Take a tour with us and explore the latest updates on Adobe Support Community. I have always used LRC but now ventured into PS but won't be able to continue this if the files are this size. I suppose I have two questions for the forum. Firstly is this normal? Secondly is there another format I can try? I did try PSD but this is still mb? The DNG format contains the raw image, which from a camera is normally 3 greyscale files one for red data, one for blue data and one for green data.

The red channel carries data for one quarter of the pixels in the image, the blue one quarter and the green a half. Each pixel is normally 14 bits and the file is then compressed using lossless compression. The TIFF file at 16 bit has two bytes for each colour channel at each pixel site. So 6 bytes for every pixel.

Unlike the raw dng file, Each channel red , green, blue has every pixel in the image. If you have more than one layer, then that increases the file size further. The file when saved may be compressed or not depending on your TIFF settings, but the files are always going to be larger than the raw files. My advice would be don't worry about file sizes, increase your storage if necessary.

That way you can focus on the best image quality. The one exception is when sending a file onward, in which case you may need to export a copy and use a lossless lossy compression format such as jpeg but that should never be used for master files. I also seem to dimly remember an issue where some compression would work less well possibly to the point of increasing file-size in 16bit — was it LZW maybe?

That's right. Greyscale image: This image is a greyscale image, each pixel is 8 bits. TIFF is uncompressed. RAW also is uncompressed, but is like the digital equivalent of a film negative. TIFF files are significantly larger than their JPEG counterparts, and can be either uncompressed or compressed using lossless compression.

TIFF images retain good quality, but they can take up a lot of disk space. That means that no data is being lost in the compression , unlike a lossy format like JPG. TIFF files are larger, but will not lose any quality or clarity when edited and saved repeatedly.

JPEGs , on the other hand, will lose a small amount of quality and clarity each time they are saved. TIFF is, in principle, a very flexible format that can be lossless or lossy. The details of the image storage algorithm are included as part of the file. In practice, TIFF is used almost exclusively as a lossless image storage format that uses no compression at all.

Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard were among the contributors to the format. If you're printing photos—especially at enormous sizes— use this format. I guess a very loose analogy would be asking why adults are so much larger than babies, why can't everyone be as compact as babies because then we could fit a lot more people into houses and airplanes.

The reason is that babies are the perfect size for a newly created person and have everything necessary to get started in life, but once the baby fills out all of its potential in terms of brain size, organs, and muscles to become a productive, contributing adult member of society, it's a heck of a lot bigger and heavier. When you "print" a raw file, you aren't actually printing the raw file, you print the RGB data processed from the raw file by your edit settings. You print image data that is more like a TIFF than a raw file, since no printing software knows what to do with raw camera data.

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How many bits are the TIFF files? How many bits are your. CR2 files? The TIFFs are 16 bpc. Huh, I always thought the. CR2 files were 16 bpc too. Just checked the manual - they are 14bpc. That accounts for a 3. Still a bit short I think it would be more than 3.