Today’s Question: When scanning photos is it best to scan to TIFF format?
Tim’s Quick Answer: While the TIFF format is arguably the best choice for saving scanned photos in terms of image quality, that doesn’t make it the best choice for all situations.
More Detail: The TIFF file format enables you to save images with maximum quality, which can be helpful in terms of providing the best quality when the scanned images are printed. However, TIFF files will also be considerably larger than other formats such as JPEG. Depending on your priorities for the images, in some cases you may prefer to save as JPEG rather than TIFF.
If image quality is your top concern, I recommend saving scanned images in the TIFF file format. I also recommend scanning from a slide or negative rather than a print whenever possible, as the latter contains far less information than the original film.
However, if you are simply trying to digitize photos so they can be reviewed and shared more easily, it may not be necessary to preserve those images with maximum quality with TIFF files that will consume considerable hard drive space. For example, an image scanned from an 8″x10″ print and saved in the TIFF format would produce a file size of around 40MB, while a JPEG image even at maximum quality would result in a file size of around 3MB.
The primary issue with saving as a JPEG image is that there will always be some degree of compression artifacts that can appear as a grid pattern that is visible when viewing the image closely. If you are simply digitizing images for easier review and sharing, the JPEG compression artifacts may not be a concern. If quality is your top concern, the saving TIFF files will achieve that goal, though with considerably more storage space required.
