Just looking for suggestions for creating positive copies for editing. Basically tiff is just too enormous to be practical and a 100% quality sRGB jpeg seems to lose too much to make a good print.
My workflow is to convert my raw NEF files on my PC. I can then edit those on the iPad via CC but the sliders etc are all inverted. I had been exporting to sRGB jpeg and then importing to CC for edits. This was generally OK but prints tended to show off colours and some banding occasionally. I’d therefore like an option to create a master positive copy from my negative in a format which allows good editing and good printing options. This master will then be edited used to create any further copies eg. For printing, for Facebook etc. so needs the greatest latitude I can manage.
Here is where I have got to:
TIFF - too large to be practical
JPEG - issues as noted above. Would a different colour space help with printing later when exporting the original? I struggle with these concepts
JPEG xl - this seemed to work but most recently I’ve had some weird artefacts when exporting at 100% quality (but still compressed) and with 16 bits per channel in ProPhoto colour space. See images for the comparison of the jxl and NEF
Avif - seems to be 10bit which is ok, but had seen people say it wasn’t great for photos,
Psd - am assuming this will be as big as the tiff.
Would really appreciate any thoughts.
Have LR Classic 13.5.1 on PC and LR 9.5.1 on iPad.
Examples of the weird jxl issue below. You can see a massive magenta shift
Hi, are you trying direct JPEG XL export? Maybe better option would be to convert TIFFs to Lossy DNG (which are JPEG XL internally). Tha’ts what I am using when ultimate quality is not needed and some reduction in storage is beneficial.
I think you should do simple math and multiply absolute number of pixels by 3 (RGB) and by 2 ( 16 bit) and you have the size of uncompressed 16 bit image in bytes. After that if you want the lossless storage format , you use tiff with zip compression or PSD. The compression ratio will vary depending on amount of detais and noise in original picture but will be very good. This is what you want to store for lossless storage. Anything else will mean you sacrifice some quality. In practice, you may resize the pictures before storing them by preserving 300 pixels for each linear inch of the largest print you will ever print. Most likely this operation will save you tons of space. Just select the best algorithm when scaling picture down - that will require some testing. After all the scanned images have too much intrinsic noise just by virtue of the camera scanning process and film grain interplay. So proper downsizing of otherwise fully processed pictures will not harm them at all. I hope you still keep your original NEFs in at least two separate places, so you can reprocess them again if someone wants to buy your picture to exhibit it on a billboard at Times Square (though billboard will be printed at less than 300 DPI, so you are safe) . HTH
As long as you remain in raw format you should do as much of the editing as feasible in NLP. Its algorithms are designed to adjust files derived from captures of negatives in ways that are either awkward or inferior with other software. When you reach the limit of what NLP can give you and you still need further adjustment, then do it in Lr, and if that’s not enough, render the file and continue editing in PS. The JPEG file format was designed for efficient and rapid transmission of images electronically. It is not meant for high-end fine art photography. If you are trying to produce high quality prints and want the editing scope and convenience you are accustomed to from regular digital photography, convert your negative captures to positive in NLP and then save them out as TIFF files in ProPhoto colour space. Buy more storage if file size is causing you storage problems.
Mark is 100% right.
There is no alternative to TIFF if you want a quality print.
To save some space you can losslessly compress them and/or reduce them to a size where your largest print at 300ppi will not be compromised but frankly I wouldn’t bother - just buy some more storage and save yourself the headaches…
