PEF to TIF

This may sound a daft question but I am currently playing with my new copy of PSE7

I opened a 10.8MB PEF file, adjusted it for colour, levels etc. and saved it as a TIF file. The saved file is now 57.4MB! In another instance I adjusted and cropped by about 50% a PEF file of 9.27MB and the TIF version is 27.2MB. Am I doing something wrong? Should I buy a bigger hard drive

Well off my *ist D a 12Mb pef becomes a 17Mb Tiff in a straight conversion. The different sizes you are getting may be down to you resizing the image in PSE7. Don't know where anything is in PSE7 so can't direct you but I'm sure someone will know.

PEFs are compressed (losslessly). TIFs can be larger because they are uncompressed. Your PEF file has effectively been "unzipped". There are different types of TIF as well: 8 bit, 16 bit, etc.

You're not doing anything wrong, but you might want think about whether you need to keep all those big TIFs permanently. PSE users will be able to advise you more specifically.

Thanks both! Understand now why TIF are larger. Will wait to see what comments there may be from PSE experts

I would not profess to be an expert, but I use Tiff only while I am working on an image.

So for example I will convert from raw in Silkypix and save as a full sized tiff. I then open the tiff in Elements and do the specific work(selective noise reduction/exposure/colour adjustment etc).

I then downsize to say 800*800 pixels (if i am going to post on here); sharpen and save as jpeg.

If I expect to produce some larger sized copies I might keep the tiff, otherwise I will delete it. I always keep the raw file so I can produce the picture again, but will only keep the tiff if i have done a lot of work on it. They are big files.

if i dont need to do any editing work in PSE, then I process from raw direct to jpeg.

I dont have much experience of printing, so someone else can hopefully advise what format is best to use for that.

I may be doing you a disservice here Andrew (feel free to tell me if I am :wink but I found this electronic book to be very good and includes PS and PSE practical examples. The only downside is with the pound to dollar conversion it's become quite expensive now but I would still reccommend it as it is continually updated. Worth a thought maybe.

I always say, you're never too old to learn

Thanks, will give the demo a go, it's some time since I spent any US dollars

The definitive PSE book is "Photoshop Elements 7 The Missing Manual" by Barbara Brundage. Try Amazon.

It will be money well spent.

Generally I keep a large version as an unsharpened TIFF. I then use that to make any other size of image from, be it for printing or for web. After resizing for the different purposes I sharpen as appropriate to that size.

Always sharpen last and bear in mind that a web image will need a different amount of sharpening to an A3 print.

Thanks John for your comments. I have just printed an A4 image from that 57MB file and although I say it myself, it's rather good

A 16-bit tiff takes a lot more space than an 8-bit tiff, and I was guess that like older versions of PS/PSE you can't do all the editing on the 16-bit version....

There is no harm in saving as an 8-bit and saving space

An 8 bit TIFF would be the norm. There's very little need for 16 bit TIFF unless you have specific reasons for using it.

I can't find an option in PSE7 for 8 or 16 bit so what's the default setting please? 'Pentax Photo Laboratory' offers both.

8 bit is the default. Everything you are likely to do with an image will be 8 bit - even if you did work in 16 bit you would have to convert to 8 bit to print.

OK John, thanks.

Don't know if this also was your question but the difference in size
10.8MB PEF - 57.4MB TIFF
croped them 50% and get
9.27MB PEF - 27.2MB TIFF
The difference comes that PEF saves alot more then only the image information, it also holds camera information wereby TIFF only holds image (pixel) information.

The 10.8MB PEF is just as good as the 57.4MB TIFF, you afterall make it from that file
You can also use compresion with TIFF, if you save the file you can selected that option. ZIP saves the most space, do keep in mind that not all programs can handel compressed TIFF's.

For my file handeling I do the same as Peter.
JPEG is good enough for almost everything and it sure is a lot smaller.
I let my computer repack PEF raw to DNG raw, I save about 2MB or 3MB á photo sdoesn't seem much but if you have over 4000 photos it's quite a lot so worht the wait I think.
DNG might also be better supported by PSE7 then PEF, with CS4 it handels it almost like a PSD file so you can do everything with it.