What is the best format for printing?

[sami1979]

Hi,

I want to print my work. my destination is laser printer in RGB mode. I confused rather I should use Photoshop PDF or TIFF. As I understand PDF includes lots of feature that are not relevant to Photoshop. TIFF in the other hand is a simple and none compressive format that should make the job well.

Any input will be welcome.

S

[w3jxp-V4L7UU]

Not enough information! Is this a local printer (one attached to your computer)? Are you sending it out to a printer?

If it's local and your printing from Photoshop,  the format doesn't matter. If your sending it out to a commercial printer, then the proper thing is to ask them what format they would like.

John

[sami1979]

Sorry. its commercial printer. i did ask them but thay told me "Jpg is fine". so i could not  relay on thier knowladge.

[Guest]

Why not?  Your question was what format.  Their answer is jpg.  jpg's can not contain layers.  Is that a problem?

[sami1979]

Jpg compresses the data in order to shrink the file size. It might damage the final quality.

[S_D_A_]

sami1979 wrote:

Jpg compresses the data in order to shrink the file size. It might damage the final quality.

NOT necessarily. One can convert to jpeg without any compression. Just don't use "Save for Web" do a Save As and set your compression OR use jpeg2000.

[sami1979]

are you saying that flat TIFF and JPG will produce the same printing quality ? If generally speaking why taking the risk?

[w3jxp-V4L7UU]

I would prefer myself to use TIFF if given a chouse but it somewhat depends on the size of the print. 8x10 or smaller then a high quality JPG could be all right. At the bottom end like a 4x6 inch then almost anything would be OK. But I would not argue with the print shop, they should know there equipment and it doesn't work out, I would find another place to get my printing done.

John

[Guest]

Not to start an argument but I'll give my opinion.  Majority of my work is portraits and weddings.  As I work on files I save as psd's.  Once I'm POSITIVE I'm finished I save as jpgs, highest quality.  Those I save to CD and external hard-drive.  In the event that I need to do additional work on one of those jpg's, at a later date, I again work it as a psd until finished.  I then save it as a tif to avoid any further degrading of that file.

My point, right or wrong, is that I don't see any degrading of files saved once  at highest quality jpg.  That said, I never (never say never) save as a jpg twice.

[sami1979]

It always seems so obvious not to use jpg for printing. jpg purpose in this world is to zip image data, not to deliver the file for printing.

Should be mentioned that PDF is another option. I don’t see sense to use it for only one image. It has lots of options among compressing (or not). But it still goes to jpg. I still don’t see it as a replacement for TIFF.

Hope it didn’t make big waves J

S

[Michael D Sullivan]

There is a lossless version of the JPEG image file format (it doesn't use JPEG compression), but it isn't implemented in much if any software, including Photoshop.  Even at the highest quality levels, JPEG compression causes some alteration in some pixels, but at the highest quality setting, the alteration will be very slight and should not be visible even in contrasty areas.

The downside of JPEG vs. PDF is that JPEG files cannot contain vectors, so all vector shapes, and more importantly all text, will be rasterized; PDF files can contain vector shapes and text fonts.  If the printing shop uses a RIP or a Postscript printer, the vector content will be printed at the printer's highest resolution, which will likely be higher than the resolution of the rasterized image.