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File Formats

I thought we would cover some or of the technical crap you really don't want to know, but should before we get back into things in one of those areas would be file formats. So up on the white board, I've wrote written down the file formats that I usually end up using, and I just want to let you know how I think about them. I usually have my camera set to shoot raw, and it's only my camera that can create those raw files. I can't save anything back into a raw file. And that's why when you try to adjust a raw file, you're going to get another file along with it That ends in Ex MP. If there's a file with same name is your raw file in the same folder in It Ends and ex MP, that's your came a raw sightings in there. So if you're gonna move your raw file, move that file along with it, so you keep your adjustments. If you delete that little file, then you deleted your camera. Raw adjustments. And so the next time you open the image, it's gonna come in with default settings. The file format for...

Ron will not be dot raw. It will depend on the brand of camera you have. If it's a cannon, it will be CR two. If it's Ah Nikon, it'll be any f. And there's a whole list of other ones for different camera manufacturers. But in your camera, you can choose between Ron J. Peg and I find with raw I could do much more dramatic adjustments before the image falls apart. D N G is known as the digital negative format. It's something Adobe came up with, and it's their alternative to raw. You could take a raw file and converted into a DMG. That's one option you have. One advantage of converting into a DMG is sometimes your file format file size will go down, get smaller because it can. It can compress the image without losing quality. It will do its nose lossless compression, and so Ken Gilo smaller. Also, you don't need to have little ex MP files to keep track of changes you've made with camera raw. It can build it right into the DMG file, and there's a preview attached to that DMG file that it can update. So if you ever view a DMG file. In other software like View, a preview of thumbnail image may be in a photo management software. It could show you what the image looked like, possibly with some of the camera raw adjustments. And so that's the good stuff in there. The reason why they came up with this is that raw file formats are proprietary. They're unique to each manufacturer in those manufacturers do not tell you what's in that file. They don't say how they save the data that's in there. And so Adobe has to kind of guests at what's in there in reverse engineer the file format to figure out how they're storing the data that's in there. DMG file format, though, is fully documented, meaning that if I want to write software that can open a DMG file, all I didn't have to do is get some information from Adobe to figure out how to do that, instead of having to reverse engineer one of proprietary file formats so you can convert your files to DMG if you'd like. I personally don't because I'm lazy in anything that adds extra states to my workflow that are not absolutely ascent, essential are things that I often don't do. Ah, a lot of people will disagree with me on that. They'll say, What if your camera manufacturer goes out of business? You have a no name, some brand you never heard of camera in that manufacture guts out of business. And now software makers don't want to write software that opens that specific file format, And that's one reason why they want to go to D and G. Well, Adobe has something called the DMG converter, where you can take a raw file, feed it to this software and out pops a DMG file. Why not just convert them later on through the same software that already exists, unless they're going to remove support for things they've already worked to support? If they start doing that, I'll convert my files at that time. I'm not saying it's bad to use TNG at all. I'm saying I'm lazy and therefore I don't Okay. Ah, what I really wish would happen is I wish Canon and Nikon would adopt the DMG file format so I could set my camera to shoot in it. Some lower volume manufacturers of cameras have decided to do that and it's nice because then you have a file format that's fully documented. You don't have to update your camera raw plug in all the time to support new cameras because it's documented how it saved in there, and it could be really nice. That's what I'd really like. Tng j Peg You can set your camera to shoot J pegs, but I rarely do J pegs air limited to 256 brightness levels, which is enough to make your image look good and print. Okay, um, but it's a compression. It's a file format that has compression built into it, which degrades the quality. And so, if I'm going to use J. Peg, I'm gonna use it at the very end of my workflow to send my final image to somebody else I don't use. J. Peg is a working file format file format where I'm going to save my image, open it later on and work on it more because each time I save and close the file, the quality goes down a little bit each time. And so when I'm completely done, all end up keeping my original file in a file format. Other than J. Peg. And then I'll save off a copy that might be scaled down to send to whoever needs that picture so they can get a image that's easy to email and all that. But I don't think of it as a working file format. Tiff File Format Is Great File format It does not degrade the quality of your picture at all. So when you open the image, it looks identical to when you closed it, unlike J. Peg, which would degrade the quality a little bit. But if wouldn't degrade it all, tiff is what I would call a universal file format, meaning any software designed for opening pictures can most likely open a tiff. File The file formats in this list that a universal file formats would be the following and somewhat that one J peg tiff GIF in in Ping are universal file. Four minutes were most software that can open pictures can open those You don't have to ask somebody. Can you open? Ah, you know a JPEG file. Anybody can open a J peg. Just put it in a Web browser. It'll open out. But a raw file is a proprietary file format. You need professional imaging software to open it if someone doesn't have. Photoshopped doesn't have light room. Doesn't have professional imaging software. I'd never given a raw file. They probably couldn't open it. Same with TNG. Somewhat the same with photo shop. If they don't own Photoshopped, whatever software they do on might not be able to open that. Then let's continue down the list here. Tiff. One thing it's unique about it that's different than the ones that are above it is. You can save layers in it. You can save layers in a tiff or in Photoshopped file format for photo shop were great for layers you'll find if you have layers. The tiff file format might be give you a slightly smaller file size because it's compression that it applies that is, does not degrade. The quality of your picture can sometimes be a little bit more efficient with that, but it's a toss up between those two. As far as that goes, P S. D is the final extension you get on the end of Photoshopped file format images, so photo shops, native file format. If you have layers, tries to save you into that, uh, talk about that a little bit more in a moment over here, I said, PSB PSB means that the Photoshopped file format has a file size limitation. And if you ever stitch absolutely huge panoramas and then you start adding layers where you're doing retouching, and then you're doing adjustment layers and you're doing even more than your file size gets really high. Or if you did a waterfall composite like we did earlier and you had 45 layers in it and you have an extremely high res camera, you might eventually run into the limitation of the biggest file you can save with this. I don't know what the number is. It's pretty darn huge. You have to try pretty hard to get to it. But if you do run into that, where you try to save the file and it says A, I can't do that because this file format wasn't designed for things that big you could save in. Instead, something called PSB. I think it stands for photo shop big. It's like a more modern version of this file format that doesn't have the same limitation of file size. I wouldn't casually do that, though, because If you send that file to somebody with an old old version of photo shop, they might not be will open that file or, if you use software that can open a photo shop file format image it might not be, will open that. So I would only use that if you end up with massively huge files that it wouldn't let you save and Photoshopped file format so conceptually you can save layers in either one of these two file formats, and there's no massive technical reason why to go for one or the other. But here's how I personally do things in the reason why I do it this way. I only use tiff for images that do not contain layers. If I have invented this is not contained layers and I want to maintain the highest quality, I'm gonna save it as a tiff file. The reason why I'm saving it is a tiff file is it's a universal file format, meaning If I give it to somebody else, they could most likely open it because you don't need Photoshopped. Open it. You can use most programs that can open pictures if the image has layers in it. I used photo shop file format because Photoshopped file format is not a universal file format. I would never accidentally give one of those files to somebody else in what that allows me to dio is when I look at my hard drive and I see my list of files showing up on my drive. If I ever see dot if he as long as I keep that consistent, I know that's a high quality image that has no layers. And if I ever see not PSD, I know that that's most likely high quality image that does contain layers in that way just by glancing at a folder. I don't have to be in photo, shopper, bridge or anything else. Just open a folder up. And if I keep that consistent just for an easy file management protocol, then I could glance at a folder and say OK, high quality flattened Image PST. High quality, layered image. If I C J. Peg I know that that's most likely, a lower quality image might have been scaled down for the convenience of given it somebody else. Most of the time, I'll end up saving out of J Peg giving it to ever needed it like emailing uploading to the Web or bring it on a disk and sending somebody. And I just delete that because I could always come back to my Photoshopped file and make another one and no need to keep him both with. One exception is I do keep folders of things like my portfolio or something else in case I want to show him to somebody really quick and to keep the file size down. I'll use J pic if you see a the images that I use in their J pegs. The reason for that is just to keep the file size down, because when I'm teaching, oftentimes I need to keep thousands upon thousands of phones. Thousands of images that I'm not actively working on on my laptop in order make it so it doesn't consume my hard drive. Ah, lot of them all scale down, and I'll say this Jay Peak in that way. When I do a demonstration, my computer or run faster because I've scaled down the images, they're not full size, and that's true of a lot of these pictures here, you see, and it just doesn't take up all that much space on my hard drive. But all of the ones that say J. Peg when you see me working on the computer used to be raw files, and if I was doing this for high quality output, I would have started from the raw files. I wouldn't be working with Jay. Peg it all. So J. Peg is what I send other people. Then we have gift in Ping these air file format to use for the Internet. And so both Giffen Ping are good for logos, graphics, bar charts, that kind of stuff. Anything is not a photograph. You can make a photograph look OK, especially in the pink file format, but the file size will probably be bigger than a J pic, so the file formats for the Internet would be J. Peg Kif in pink. And if it's a photo, J peg will usually give you the highest quality compared to file size. If it's a graphic, one of these two will do it in. On occasion, you'll use one of these two for a photograph for special instance. For instance, Gift can have animation PNM that means animation. So if you need an animated picture you ever see once, or somebody's doing some little dance. It's probably a gift file unless it's a flash movie. If it's just a file that was made in photo shop, it's a gift file. It'll probably look pretty bad a look kind of spec lei and stuff because that's not a very good file format for photographs, then the other thing is, if the image has transparency, if it's a picture, there's a nice drop show underneath it, and it's going on top of like the background texture of a Web page. When you click on the picture and drag it to your desktop Onley, that little part of the picture goes and comes down. The background doesn't go with it. That means it has transparency where there's one image on top of another in certain parts you can see through. You can do that in either one of these file formats, but with gift that transparency is either on or off on a pixel by pixel basis, meaning I can't have something partially transparent. I can't have a see through shadow. I can either have a solid shadow or no or nothing where you can see through. So because that's an older file format with Ping. On the other hand, I can have semi transparent areas. I can have a drop shadow that you can see through so that I can overly at something else in a Web browser. That kind of stuff. So, um, Ping is a more modern file format than gift, so it has more features like that. So that's why you might put a photograph in these two file formats. You need animation. You need a transparent background with, with a soft shadow, that kind of stuff. So questions about five hormats I think that the questions as they were coming in, or things that you then Izzard as as we got through them one question from a black S C or P. Would you ever give out the original files processed or not to a customer or only ahead? Quality depict on. It depends on the arrangement with a customer. If they're paying me enough money, I'll give in my car. I don't care, but but for most people, they're not paying me for the layers. They're paying me for the end result. And so, unless we have discussed it earlier and that was part of our discussion where it might also be part of our compensation. I wouldn't as is a normal course of business. Give out my Photoshopped file because if I give out my Photoshopped filed, they might able to figure out how I did something. So then next time they don't have to hire me, they could do it themselves. And so if they're gonna ask for those layered files, I would make sure that they know they have to ask that at the beginning. I mean, they should assume that, really? But if it was part of the discussion at the beginning, but I'm sure we can arrange it, But otherwise I don't want to give away my secrets on how it do it. If it's a client that's hire me to do those techniques if somebody that tire me to teach teaching wherever they want. But, um so you know, I don't usually give away those, but it's up to you. Vice different. I guess people are just, you know, one in clarification. Questions J Peg to print is that correct? Asked Ron Jon from India, and also Clyde in Philly said is E. P. s format. Still useful for okay, Sure. Yeah. J Peg, just see. No, it's fine for an end. Use your done with all your layers. You're not going to change anything in the picture ever again. I would keep my layered Photoshopped file. That's my master file. Then I could do it. Say the house and I could save it's J. Peg and I could send that out to be published. That's what I do lots and now to a publication because I need to send it electronically to them in sending a tip for a photo shop. File sizes going much higher, and it's just gonna clog our Internet connection and all that. But when I save a J peg for publication, there's a quality slider. I'm gonna leave it really high, and I'm gonna make sure that I'm done with that file. If I'm gonna make any changes later on, I'm gonna go back to the original photo shop file, make the changes and replace that J peg with a newly created one. But Jay Pad could be fined for publication if you leave the quality setting high and you haven't used it is your working file format the other one was E P S E. P. S is somewhat of an alternative to tiff. If you were going to use something for publication, you could use an E. P s file their less common these days than they were a decade or two ago. E p s stands for encapsulated postscript. You want to know what the heck that means? Um, but I find that I rarely needed anymore. It's not a bad thing, though, if you're using it, huh? Great, Thank you. And one quick question from Shark DVR in Charlotte, North Carolina. Is there more data to work with in a tiff versus J pick if you scan film and save as a digital file? So there's always more information in a tiff file that a J. Peg because J. Peg, in order to give you a small file, must throw away some information to do it in. Tift doesn't need to do that. Also, a J Peg file is limited to what's known as eight bits, meaning 256 brightness levels. The tiff file could be eight bits 16 bits or even higher. So, yeah, J Peg is a good ending file format. Not a good working file format. Okay, we'll do one more question from Kiko. Ha. Do you saved JPEG files at 12. Best quality. It depends what they're being used for. If I'm just emailing a picture of I don't know this marker to my girlfriend to say I want one of these, it's gonna be a quality of probably 77 is what I use for generic. I'm emailing this to ah, friend. Show them what something looks like. I don't think they're going to be reproducing it or anything like that. If I'm going to send it out to a magazine to be reproduced or in a brochure, I'm gonna have that quality setting much higher. I'm gonna try to get it up, you know, 10 or above, I think go up to 12. So between 10 and 12 it depends how many pictures I need to send them. And how big those files were gonna be. Because sometimes it could just take too long. I don't have time to wait for a top load, so yeah. Yes, at the bottom, there's that little thing. This is progressive scans and you can choose 35 What is that when you're saving a J pic, she's asking, There's a little setting where you wanted to be a progressive J. Peg. It's mainly an artifact of old, slow Internet. If you remember many years ago when you had a really slow connection, I mean the kind where it was hooked to a telephone line, not to the cable company or whatever you're hooked to. Now, if you ever saw a picture load and when it loaded it first came in and look kind of chunky like it's not either somewhat blurry but somewhat blocking, and then you saw scan over it. A little more detail came in and scan over it again. A little more detail came in and then finally look fine. That was a progressive J peg in the number of times it took to go across the image, for it looked normal was the number of remember the wording? Progressive scans is progressive scans not really necessary anymore because I don't run into people in general that are on dial up much anymore. If you have, like an uncle or something that's on dial up, you click that box if you're gonna put it on a Web page for him and he appreciate it. But for most people, that's no longer needed. Thank you