back to the future -- converting JPG back to TIFF

[featherweight]

hi all!

i have a high volume retouching project with a quick deadline, so i'm looking for some fast feedback!

all of the images i have received are JPGs (sad!). i'm wondering if its worth it to export them to TIFFs and work on them from there?

or, is it better to simply work on the JPGs in lightroom & then export to TIFF after i've made my global corrections.

thank you for any input at all!!

[andrewrodney]

Re: back to the future -- converting JPG back to T

The JPEG compression damage is done. But by converting them BACK to TIFF, this will cease if you edit them additionally where with a JPEG, each time you save a change in the JPEG, more data loss.
In Lightroom, you're applying metadata edits and LR produces a NEW iteration which may be a JPEG or a TIFF etc. Still, unless storage space is an issue, stick with TIFF. I consider JPEG an output format primarily for uploading to the web and mobile devices.

[featherweight]

Re: back to the future -- converting JPG back to T

thank you for your guidance!

my plan is settled on
- global edits to the JPGs in LR
- export from LR as TIFFs
- skin retouch & compositing on TIFFs in PS

does this sound like a good plan to you?

i feel for my client! the images could sing a little louder if they had access to a lossless file format for me to work with.

[andrewrodney]

Re: back to the future -- converting JPG back to T

Sounds good.

[featherweight]

Re: back to the future -- converting JPG back to T

just to close out the process on this project/thread.

i ended up pulling the JPGs into lightroom & making all of my color, tone, density (global) changes there. i then exported the files as Adobe 1998, TIFF, 16-bit files. (i know there's no rewinding the JPGs, but i thought i would try to preserve as much data as possible.) i then made all my composite corrections on the TIFFs in PS.

i think the final files turned out pretty clean considering their challenged origin as sRGB JPGs. Thankfully the source files were pretty large ( ~100 mb) & left me a bit of digital room.

[klev]

Re: back to the future -- converting JPG back to T

just to close out the process on this project/thread.

i ended up pulling the JPGs into lightroom & making all of my color, tone, density (global) changes there. i then exported the files as Adobe 1998, TIFF, 16-bit files. (i know there's no rewinding the JPGs, but i thought i would try to preserve as much data as possible.) i then made all my composite corrections on the TIFFs in PS.

I don't know if you will get anything from converting back to Adobe 1998. You aren't likely to encounter problems of muted colors that would be solved by Adobe 1998. I could see doing this if the space just happens to be less intuitive as you're used to Adobe 1998.

Converting 8 -> 16 might help if you're using any adjustments that are likely to introduce banding that was not present in the original data (such as anything that uses a gaussian kernel like unsharp mask or gaussian blur).