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My company wants to prints to be sent as jpgs not tiffs for printing my art

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
March 24, 2022
5 replies
395 views

When I save at jpg I'm afraid I'm losing quality. I'm not sure if there is a way to do this or find another printing company that accepts tiffs instead. Please help.

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NB, colourmanagement

Community Expert

You’ve already had some good advice here - I'd like to add some explanation.

The trouble with Jpeg is the compression** (that’s also the advantage because it makes much smaller files). Many print jobs, are worked as TIF or PSD - then, once retouching etc is complete a copy* is made. This copy is flattened, resized, THEN SHARPENED to suit the exact output [printed] size & resolution - - and now that copy is saved and sent as Jpeg (as a last step).

[*You'll want to archive at least a full sized retouched/colour corrected TIFF, ideally, that will be a version of the original final file with its layers intact - so that any adjustments made in the future are not damaging. ]

**IF any Jpeg file is later resized or cropped, then it will be re-compressed when saved again, this is potentially very damaging.

Mind you, a fine art print shop that won't accept TIF, that’s pretty strange IMO.

I hope this helps
neil barstow, colourmanagement net :: adobe forum volunteer:: co-author: 'getting colour right'
google me "neil barstow colourmanagement" for lots of free articles on colour management

J

jazz-y

Legend

If I'm not mistaken, then when saving jpg at maximum quality, Photoshop always uses 4:4:4 subsampling, i.e. there is practically no loss of detail when converting a file to jpg once.

If we talk about color losses (due to rounding operations when converting from one color coding system to another), then when using the maximum quality, they are also extremely insignificant, and if you do not resave the file countless times, then they can be neglected.

For example, on this histogram, the result of comparing the same 792 samples of colors from tiff and jpg. There is a difference, but it is beyond human color perception and the printing process will introduce much larger color distortions.

D Fosse

Community Expert

Most of these discussions about the perils of jpeg tend to converge on the spot where there's almost no damage. In other words, "maximum" quality. I put that in quotation marks because "maximum" is of course not maximum. Some values will always change.

But I think that's a sidetrack. Jpeg is a tradeoff, and not a bad one at that. For a little quality loss that you can't really see, you get a huge reduction in file size. Quality 12 is simply not a particularly good bargain. You can usually go down to 8 or 9, and there will still be almost no damage, and none that you can see. But this time, the file is perhaps 2% of original size instead of 15.

The point we're all trying to make is to not use jpeg as working/archival format, and not use it for graphics/text. But as final delivery for photographs, jpeg can be perfectly fine. For web, file size is in fact an overriding consideration. Nobody wants to wait 15 seconds for an image to load.

None of which excuses a printer who refuses to take TIFF. That's suspect in itself. And if quality is critical, which it quite often is, I still go with TIFF, and deal with the file size.

J

jazz-y

Legend

Perhaps we are talking about printing on a photo minilab. For many models, the software really only accepts jpg files.

It seems to me that all these talks about quality make sense when their context is clearly understood. If we are talking about printing some abstract file on some printing device, i have more questions not about quality of the file, but about how many colors and details will be distorted during the printing process 🙂

T

Test Screen Name

Legend

Often JPEG is the final deliverable - but that doesn't mean you switch to work in JPEG. Each time you edit it will get worse and worse. So you continue to save as PSD, TIF or whatever. You save a copy as JPEG for the final product. If you need to edit, you ignore that JPEG and go back to the main saved file.

c.pfaffenbichler

Community Expert

So you continue to save as PSD, TIF or whatever.

Indeed!

Keeping the layered file for possible future editing is essential.

Jumpenjax

Community Expert

Totally agree!

Lee- Graphic Designer, Print Specialist, Photographer

D Fosse

Community Expert

When I save at jpg I'm afraid I'm losing quality.

By @elizabethb12181688

You are, but for photographs it will usually work out OK, as long as you save out to jpeg only once, and don't try to edit the file again. Most of the damage happens when re-editing and re-saving.

That said, jpeg is totally unsuitable for graphic design. Jpeg is intended for photographs and that's where it works well. If you have graphic elements with areas of flat color next to each other, or very smooth gradients, jpeg will destroy it quickly.

In any case, a printer who flat out refuses to accept TIFF, doesn't sound very trustworthy to me. I'd go elsewhere just based on that.

EDIT cross-post.

c.pfaffenbichler

Community Expert

When I save at jpg I'm afraid I'm losing quality.

And you are right.

But for many, probably most, imagery the quality loss at high quality jpg compression is barely noticable.

The lower the quality the steeper the problems, gradients in certain color ranges can result in noticable banding even with high quality, though.

What kind of images are you talking about?

Can you notice jpg-artefacts when viewing the jpgs at View > 100%?

E

elizabethb12181688Author

Participant

Art work.

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