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Next, opening and saving

56b2aeb7b5886_rawworkflow2_opt.thumb.jpe

From ACR, I open the image into Photoshop. There, I save it as a PSD file.

  • PSD is the almighty file format. It can support 16-bit data, extra layers, extra channels, vectors, different colour modes, etc, etc. (Please note that I do not recommend 16-bit in most cases. 8-bit is ample.)
  • PSDs are uncompressed. This means there’s no risk of file damage, but it also means BIG files. Luckily, hard drives are big and cheap nowadays.
  • Tiff files are (more or less) the same as PSD files. But I use PSD because it’s the default setting, therefore the easiest to use. Lazy? Yes. Sensible? Also yes. There is really no need to use Tiff files in most workflows.

Editing >>

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My mother and I just had a 'discussion' about this. She can't understand why I would save the photo as a PSD when I could simply save over the CR2 file. Why have two files when you can revert back to the original if necessary? It makes sense to me to be able to see the original file and if I want to have two different edits saved as PSD files I can do that (but I probably won't do that too often). Can you elaborate a bit more as to the purpose of the two files?

Also, in Bridge, is there a way to see the CR2 file unedited? Even though I have not saved over the CR2 file, it still displays my edited version next to the PSD. I'd prefer to see it unedited and I know I can 'right click ---> develop settings ---> camera raw defaults' for each image, that's kind of annoying.

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3 hours ago, Anne Adlington said:

My mother and I just had a 'discussion' about this. She can't understand why I would save the photo as a PSD when I could simply save over the CR2 file. Why have two files when you can revert back to the original if necessary? It makes sense to me to be able to see the original file and if I want to have two different edits saved as PSD files I can do that (but I probably won't do that too often). Can you elaborate a bit more as to the purpose of the two files?

This is a joke, right?  Lol!

3 hours ago, Anne Adlington said:

Also, in Bridge, is there a way to see the CR2 file unedited?

Why?

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8 minutes ago, Damien Symonds said:

This is a joke, right?  Lol!

Why?

I'm just used to seeing the unedited CR2 file and the PSD file next to each other in FastStone. When I started using Bridge the other day I had a brief moment of wondering where my unedited CR2 file went. 

10 minutes ago, Damien Symonds said:

Ooh thank you!

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3 minutes ago, Anne Adlington said:

I'm just used to seeing the unedited CR2 file and the PSD file next to each other in FastStone. When I started using Bridge the other day I had a brief moment of wondering where my unedited CR2 file went.

No, that's not an answer.  WHY would you want to see the unedited version?

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5 minutes ago, Damien Symonds said:

This is madness.

Lol sorry! This all spurred from a really frustrating discussion last night and had me going through the RAW class trying to find the answers I was looking for. I just tried to 'save' a CR2 file for the first time ever and I realize it's not even possible to do so I will just carry on and refrain from future Bridge/Lightroom discussions with my mother.  

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Lately I heard a professional photographer say that TIFF files contain more information, PSD compressed and deletes certain information. You say there's no/hardly any difference.

What about it? Thanks!

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Oh? 
This is what I found on a forum: PSD files are usually smaller than TIFF files because the PSD format has compression built into it to make the files smaller. This is lossless compression, and doesn't affect the contents of the file - you can open it, save it close it numerous times without affecting the quality of the image it contains.

TIFF files are not as compressed (if you choose LZW compression) or aren't compressed at all if you don't compress them, and so are much larger, but contain the same information about the image they contain.

If the files are only going to be used by you, save them as PSD files, but if you're going to exchange them with other family members, the TIFF format may be better as it can probably be opened by more different software than can the PSD files.

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37 minutes ago, Marielene said:

If the files are only going to be used by you, save them as PSD files, but if you're going to exchange them with other family members, the TIFF format may be better as it can probably be opened by more different software than can the PSD files.

This is true, but it's pretty much irrelevant, because you can't trust that other software would be able to use the layers.

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