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Jorma Jokinen.
I have made a Family Tree chart in tiff format. Every time I get new information I open it in PS and do my editing. After repeating this tens of times the older parts of the chart are beginnig to seem more and more unreadable. Why this because tiff format is told to be uncompressed and loseless.
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Yes, the TIFF format is lossless UNLESS you choose the "JPEG" option on saving (that is, the JPEG option for saving TIFF).
Can you share a little cut off part of the family tree, with no complete personal info, to show us what the damage looks like?
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I don’t see any images in your post.
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Thank you for the pictures. I agree, bad things have happened to this picture. There seem to be colour changes in lines, but this is not the kind of damage done by JPEG. I wonder if you could look under Image > Mode and tell what options are ticked? There should be two options chosen.
Also, please do confirm what options you choose for TIFF saving. These are the options I see
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I agree that the damage does not look like JPEG artifacts. It looks more like resampling.
When editing the family tree, are the information panel layers made larger or smaller at any time?
Also, is the family tree maintained as a flattened TIFF, or is all new and old information preserved as separate layers? Because it is strange that text would appear to degrade. A normal text layer should always be editable and scalable, remaining perfectly sharp no matter how often you edit the document. In the example, it looks like text has been rasterized to pixels, no longer editable as text and subject to degradation when scaled.
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Here is a copy of my tiff saving options. When I look the chart file options in my hard disk Windows tells that the file is uncopmpressed.
I bild my chart using enormous amounts of copy-save actions and to keep the work in hands I regularly have to flatten the image. I must also tell that texts in the chart are not text but every letter is a small picture image. Does this flattening have something to do with the problem? However worsening of the file does not happen at once but it needs several saving repetitions.
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Thank you your TIFF settings look fine. Please tell us what your Image Mode options are.
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These are the settings I am looking for (different language, but the position should be the same)
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Ok. My image mode options are identical with Your example.
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@JJo-45 wrote:
When I look the chart file options in my hard disk Windows tells that the file is uncopmpressed.
There is nothing wrong with your save settings, and color settings will have no effect on this. The degradation is probably caused by editing in a way that allows pixels to be degraded upon transformations, mostly by working with a flattened file.
When editing, are selections made larger or smaller?
What is the height and width of the document in pixels?
@JJo-45 wrote:
I bild my chart using enormous amounts of copy-save actions and to keep the work in hands I regularly have to flatten the image. I must also tell that texts in the chart are not text but every letter is a small picture image. Does this flattening have something to do with the problem?
Flattening does rasterize smooth text into pixels, making them subject to degradation.
Because your concern is file size…
Do you have Adobe Illustrator or Adobe InDesign? A document with a lot of text can have much smaller file sizes in those applications, because they are vector-based.
If you must do it in Photoshop, preserve the text layers to prevent degradation, but reduce the file size by applying some compression to the TIFF file. ZIP compression can save a lot of space, with no quality loss.
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My document size is 22526 px x 7559 px and resolution 96 px/inch.
The low resiolution is derived from the program (MyHeritage). I can´t get the family tree data as digital file but I copy it from the computer screen with screensaver. So My text is not text but letters are small picture images as all other elements like lines and pictures. Data boxes come from MyHeritage but placing the boxes to my cahart, drawing new lines and editing text inside boxes happens by enormous amount of copy and save actions.
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@JJo-45 wrote:
The low resiolution is derived from the program (MyHeritage). I can´t get the family tree data as digital file but I copy it from the computer screen with screensaver. So My text is not text but letters are small picture images as all other elements like lines and pictures. Data boxes come from MyHeritage but placing the boxes to my cahart, drawing new lines and editing text inside boxes happens by enormous amount of copy and save actions.
OK. I see. That explains a lot. That means the quality of the family data depends on what is copied out of MyHeritage. It is too bad it doesn’t let you copy it as editable smooth text.
It also means how good it looks depends on the quality of the display on screen in MyHeritage. Does it let you zoom in or enlarge the text? If it did, that would help preserve the quality. Because you have to copy and paste the info as images in that way, it will be hard to improve the quality.
That still does not explain why you think the quality is degrading with more saves. The TIFF format should still not do that, even if LZW or ZIP compression is used because they are lossless. But again, quality could go down if the pasted images are resized.
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I know that using screen saver is not an ideal method. Also I understand that outnumbered copy-save actions may have some influence to the quality. However the result in the beginning was good enough for me.
The main problem which occured later with time after numerous openings and savings is degrading of quality. In the latest versions there can be seen also changes of colours.
I open a picture in PS, edit it and save in tiff format in mode without any compression. Why it is not exatly the same picture that I had on the screen when I open it again?
This project has lasted more than one year. Luckily I have saved some older versions of the chart. So as last action I restored all 660 person boxes by using older, less degraded versions or replaced some with totally new ones. The result is not as good as it might have been but good enough for me to live with it.
Thanks to everybody for trying to help.
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The TIFF format is always lossless, even if you pick one of the compression options which you may not want to do for support in other products and time lost compressing and uncompressing. A TIFF isn't a JPEG so no, you can open, edit and save without the same kinds of data loss as JPEG. Now unless you're re-editing high-bit data, edits can produce some data loss from the image editing itself but not in this case, due to you picking TIFF.
More here: http://digitaldog.net/files/TIFFvsPSD.pdf
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"The TIFF format is always lossless"
That is not the case if you flatten an 8 bit image and save it as a TIFF using the jpeg compression option. Then the compression is lossy. If in doubt, try it, just Save As, choose TIFF and choose jpeg compression, setting the quality to low. On re-opening the TIFF file, the jpeg compression artifacts are obvious.
Dave
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I don't have such an option I can select.
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I wonder if it might be a Windows only option. It is greyed out unless the file is 8 bit.
Dave
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I'm indeed on a Mac. No difference in bit depth allows that selection.
IF you try that option, you get a JPEG or a TIFF?
Saving a TIFF file using JPEG compression further makes zero sense. ZIP or LZW makes a little sense if you are OK with the downsides in saving and opening.
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I wonder if it might be a Windows only option.
By @davescm
I tested on macOS. If I choose JPEG and "yes" to the alert, then the options become available. I tried all the other options first.
EDIT: After posting I chose Undo to get layers and 16-bits back. JPEG is no longer an option.
Jane
macOS
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Jane, on this Mac, I cannot select JPEG. I can click on LZW or ZIP and get that message, nothing works on the JPEG radio button. Nothing I try makes it accessible (nor can I understand why anyone would select it if they could).
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@TheDigitalDog wrote:
Jane, on this Mac, I cannot select JPEG.
A couple of things you didn't say (and it made a difference for me):
Jane
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Layers or not, high bit or not; no difference. I cannot select that radio button, nor have I ever wished to do so.
And again, I have no idea why anyone would select the option if they can and it begs the question again: do you end up with a TIFF or a JPEG?