A few years ago it was a much clearer difference between the file formats tiff and psd.
Tiff (Tagged Image File Format) was a widely accepted standard but limited in implemented features. As it is tagged, it could of course be extended, but hardly any applications supported for example layers in tiff files.
Psd was a proprietary format for Adobe Photoshop, and it supported all Photoshop's features.
Today both tiff and psd are owned by Adobe, and they support the same feature set. Tiff may still be more of a generic standard, but it allows such a lot of specific tags and additions, that you rarely can be sure that your program can read a tiff file from an unknown source. However, you can happily use Photoshop without ever opening one single psd file.
An 8-bit version of an image is often slightly bigger in tiff than psd, but the difference is not that big.
The 16-bit versions are about the same size.
Both psd and tiff file formats are lossless.
The only real reason to choose one over the other is what other applications you will use to read them. For example Preview in Mac OS X does not see transparency in tiff files, but it sees it in psd files. Nikon's Capture NX reads tiff files but it does not read psd files. And the gimp handles layers in psd files but not in tiff files.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Editing your NEF in Photoshop and Camera Raw
If you want to edit your nef in Photoshop, you will have to pass through Camera Raw - directly or indirectly. You double-click on the nef in Finder, Explorer or Bridge, and Camera Raw will open. You make the adjustments you want and can then edit the file in Photoshop. When you save the file, you will have to choose a standard format, like psd, tiff or jpeg.
If you do not want to see the Camera Raw dialogue, you can shift-doubleclick on the file in Bridge, and it will go straight to Photoshop, applying the Camera Raw conversion in the background.
You can also save directly from Camera Raw, but you cannot save to the original raw file. You will have to choose a new name and the raw extension dng or another file format. From each file, you can always go back to the "original" by choosing "Camera Raw Defaults" as Setting. Talking about an "original" is a little awkward, as the original just is a dump of camera data. You have to display it in some way, and that way is through the Settings.
If your nef files are not supported directly by Photoshop and Camera Raw and Bridge, you may be able to convert them to dng, which is Adobe's attempt at a unified raw file format. Version 4.4.1 of the free Adobe DNG Converter handles both D60's and D300's nef files.
In case you wonder, the raw conversion in Adobe Lightroom uses the same engine as Adobe Bridge, so there is no advantage trying to edit a file in both tools.
If you do not want to see the Camera Raw dialogue, you can shift-doubleclick on the file in Bridge, and it will go straight to Photoshop, applying the Camera Raw conversion in the background.
You can also save directly from Camera Raw, but you cannot save to the original raw file. You will have to choose a new name and the raw extension dng or another file format. From each file, you can always go back to the "original" by choosing "Camera Raw Defaults" as Setting. Talking about an "original" is a little awkward, as the original just is a dump of camera data. You have to display it in some way, and that way is through the Settings.
If your nef files are not supported directly by Photoshop and Camera Raw and Bridge, you may be able to convert them to dng, which is Adobe's attempt at a unified raw file format. Version 4.4.1 of the free Adobe DNG Converter handles both D60's and D300's nef files.
In case you wonder, the raw conversion in Adobe Lightroom uses the same engine as Adobe Bridge, so there is no advantage trying to edit a file in both tools.
RAW
Digital photographers use some fairly understandable formats like jpeg (used by everyone), psd (used by Photoshop users), tiff (used by people with big harddisks) and so on.
Then there is the mystical raw format which only high end cameras have.
Raw is not even really an image format. Raw is a dump of exactly what the camera sees when you press the shutter-release button.
Different cameras are made in different ways, so they see different things, of course, and therefore there are different RAW formats. My Nikon cameras call their raw files nef (Nikon Electronic Format). The format of these files is not the same as raw files from a Canon or a Pentax. It is not even the same format in my D40X and my D300. A program that can open one of them may not open the other.
Photoshop CS2 does not open my D300 nef files, so I have to convert them in some way to process them in Photoshop.
Some people claim that you never need raw files. They say that you can use jpeg for all your photos. That is clearly a lie. Any conversion from what the camera sees to any other format makes you lose some information. If you convert to small jpeg pictures you lose a lot of information. If you convert to big tiff pictures you hardly lose anything at all, but you do lose some things.
A tiff is lossless, that is, it does not lose any information in a picture. However, the raw file contains more information than just pixel by pixel image information. When you convert to tiff, this additional information is lost or distorted. And that may be just the information you needed.
Now, it is true that for most users most pictures are perfectly fine as jpeg. Nevertheless, for some users in some situations raw files are life savers.
Adobe Camera Raw
Then there is the mystical raw format which only high end cameras have.
Raw is not even really an image format. Raw is a dump of exactly what the camera sees when you press the shutter-release button.
Different cameras are made in different ways, so they see different things, of course, and therefore there are different RAW formats. My Nikon cameras call their raw files nef (Nikon Electronic Format). The format of these files is not the same as raw files from a Canon or a Pentax. It is not even the same format in my D40X and my D300. A program that can open one of them may not open the other.
Photoshop CS2 does not open my D300 nef files, so I have to convert them in some way to process them in Photoshop.
Some people claim that you never need raw files. They say that you can use jpeg for all your photos. That is clearly a lie. Any conversion from what the camera sees to any other format makes you lose some information. If you convert to small jpeg pictures you lose a lot of information. If you convert to big tiff pictures you hardly lose anything at all, but you do lose some things.
A tiff is lossless, that is, it does not lose any information in a picture. However, the raw file contains more information than just pixel by pixel image information. When you convert to tiff, this additional information is lost or distorted. And that may be just the information you needed.
Now, it is true that for most users most pictures are perfectly fine as jpeg. Nevertheless, for some users in some situations raw files are life savers.
Adobe Camera Raw
First post
I cannot count the number of times I have seen sentences like "this page will be about..." or "here I will post...." - text full of ambitions that then disappear in the void, as the page owner runs out of things to say.
This blog is the same. I have plenty of high ambitions and plenty of things I want to express (I filled a post-it with them). Let's see for how long they will last.
The main purpose... or one purpose, at least, is to collect things I found out about cameras and computers. I am no expert, but I think I know much more than many a self assured web writer, who bluntly states that he or she possesses the ultimate truth.
Please, read everything with a grain of salt. That applies to every other site on the web, but save some grains for this blog. I'm sure I am wrong sometimes, but hopefully you can verify most of the interesting things yourself.
The ingredients for it all are:
This blog is the same. I have plenty of high ambitions and plenty of things I want to express (I filled a post-it with them). Let's see for how long they will last.
The main purpose... or one purpose, at least, is to collect things I found out about cameras and computers. I am no expert, but I think I know much more than many a self assured web writer, who bluntly states that he or she possesses the ultimate truth.
Please, read everything with a grain of salt. That applies to every other site on the web, but save some grains for this blog. I'm sure I am wrong sometimes, but hopefully you can verify most of the interesting things yourself.
The ingredients for it all are:
- a Nikon D300
- a Nikon D40x
- a Canon Digital IXUS 970 IS
- Adobe Photoshop CS4
- the Gimp
- Aperture 2.1
- Nikon Capture NX 1.3
- A few computers with Mac OS X, Linux and Windows in different flavours
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