Work JPG or TIFF or PSD when restoring photos

[MaartenRF]

I am after some advice:
The majority of the vintage/old photos I am asked to restore/enhance are sent to me as jpg's.
Is it best to work on them as .jpg's or .tiff's or .psd's?
And ...
The resolution of the images I get varies between 72ppi and 200ppi The mode is usually RGB @ 8bits/channel. The first thing I do before I start to work on any image is increase its resolution to 300ppi. Apart from the obvious memory issue, is there any benefit to be had from working in 16bits/channel instead of 8bits?

[andrewrodney]

Re: Work JPG or TIFF or PSD when restoring photos

Work on a TIFF, save that as the finished archive, then send a JPEG if someone needs that. No need what so ever for .PSD files (if Adobe's Photoshop engineer's had their way, they'd get rid of it for TIFF. There's nothing a PSD provides that a TIFF doesn't other than duotone).

Not sure why you're upsizing (resampling) to 300 from the get-go, what's the final output? And PPI iss kind of meaningless, it's the number of total pixels that matter.

As for 16-bit: http://www.digitalphotopro.com/gear/...-decision.html

No 16-bit support for JPEG and if the original data isn't high bit, there's no reason to be setting it for such, that extra data is gone.

[MaartenRF]

Re: Work JPG or TIFF or PSD when restoring photos

Thanks for your response. It's much appreciated.
That's reassuring, then. .tiff's what I've been working in to final and sending out a .jpg.
PSD Who the heck needs duotone, anyway ;-) Sounds more like an STD than an image format!!
Final output? I've been doing a lot of work recently for a couple of authors: one's a genealogist the other's a historian who writes family histories. Both get their work printed. They both ask me to send them .jpg's formatted CMYK @ 300ppi
"Mine is not to reason why ..." client is King an' all that.
Thanks for link to article about 16-bit. Most helpful.
Cheers,
Maarten

[Nezbitten]

Re: Work JPG or TIFF or PSD when restoring photos

Found the forum all right then Maarten

[andrewrodney]

Re: Work JPG or TIFF or PSD when restoring photos

Both get their work printed.

How is the question which will answer what is the appropriate resolution. But you might want to size the image as they will output, set the actual resolution tag to about 200-300, you'll be fine. Do NOT send them CMYK! Someone else who knows how the images will be reproduced needs to convert the RGB data to CMYK based on the very specific output conditions.

[Repairman]

Re: Work JPG or TIFF or PSD when restoring photos

The word jpeg is often used in the same way as hoover is used for any brand of vacuum cleaner. People ask for them without 'getting' the potential implications of jpegging jpegs!

[John Wheeler]

Re: Work JPG or TIFF or PSD when restoring photos

Hi Maarten
There is a post a few years old with most of the image links still intact (not all) covering the topic of any value in converting 8 bit to 16 bit. It is true that once in 8 bit you cannot get that data back. However, there can be value in post processing in 16 bit even you start with an 8 bit image. It is a long thread (actually the topic was beat to death) yet I post 4 different cases (starting at post #17) where you can have an advantage post processing an 8 bit image in 16 bit. It is not an issue for the majority of the images yet increased degradation can happen when post processing in 8 bit so I disagree with any blanket statement that it does not make a difference. Just another opinion.

http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/software/33750-converting-8-bit-images-16-bit-any-benefits.html#post296106