Laurie23

Well that clears that up. Thanks.

Hi Damien, 

Many thanks for your patience. I read the article on file size and megapixels, then your guidelines for scanning old photos and photographing old photos.  They were helpful.  I have been scanning at 600 ppi but only 24 bit.  I have a scanner which can scan at 48 bit so I'll use that from now on.  Some of the old photos I have only digital copies and they are all over the map as far as image quality and megapixels.  I have to take what I can get as the images are coming from all different parties.  

I hate to try your patience further but I took a look at some of the jpegs I had been given as originals and the tiff files I converted them to.  I checked ppi, how many megapixels and how many inches.  Here is the breakdown on 2 of my photos.

Image 1 jpeg: 72 ppi    34.417"  x 45.889" = 8187312 pixels

                     tiff: 300 ppi   9"  x 12"= 9720000 pixels

Image 2 jpeg: 72 ppi.   55.556" x 41.667" = 12000000 pixels

                        600 ppi  20 x 16.49" = 1.1872800 pixels

By saving the tiff files as much higher resolution but smaller image size I hoped to maintain or even improve quality without having a huge file. I also thought, maybe mistakenly that when it came to the fine details I was better off making these changes before attempting any restoration.  Please correct me if I'm wrong....and I know you will.

When I open the file in Photoshop I check the resolution and image size.  Usually the photos are 72 dpi  and sometimes they are very large.  I understand what you are saying about giving images to clients as jpegs because the editing is finished. I have a somewhat unusual situation in which I am putting together restored images of family and ancestors so everyone can have a copy. I might want to do further work on the images so for my own sake I save them as tiffs.  But as you say, it IS sort of a moot point as far as the person who downloads it is concerned because even if I save it and upload it to Flickr as a tiff when they download it Flickr gives you a jpeg.  I think that's misleading as they give you a choice of what size to download and even if you choose "original size" and the original I uploaded is a tiff, they still give you a jpeg.

13 minutes ago, Damien Symonds said:

There is ABSOLUTELY no visible difference between a high quality jpeg and a tiff file.  All you're doing is forcing your family to download unnecessarily huge files.  They won't thank you for that at all.

The jpegs which they sent me or that I downloaded from Facebook are sometimes huge in size, like 45".  If I saved as a tiff at 45" it would be outrageously large, I agree! But if they want to download an image I have worked on and print it then I would think raising the resolution to 300 dpi and making the image smaller would make more sense, no? 

19 minutes ago, Damien Symonds said:

Then this whole question is moot.  You MUST upload jpeg files.

This is utter nonsense.

Why are you saying this is nonsense? Seriously....from what I read if you save as a jpeg, and edit further and then resave as a jpeg each time you resave as a jpeg you lose data and the image degrades further. Is this not true? After I read this I started saving everything I work on as tiff files.

No, they allow tiff files now.

The website is Flickr.  I'm using it only to share with friends and family.

Damien,

Is there any problem with saving a file as a tiff instead of a psd ?  I've been uploading my photos after editing to a website which doesn't accept psd format.  I don't want to save a jpeg due to obvious reason of degradation.  I'm trying to avoid having too many versions of the same photo as that would quickly become confusing. Also, related question about saving-when I convert a jpeg to a tiff I usually bump up to resolution to 300 dpi or even 600.  I reduce/enlarge the image size to around 9x12 because one rarely needs a print any larger than that for personal use.  Am I doing the right thing here? Some of my photos are old snapshots and can be blurry.