Link to Montana Fire TIFF File (Original) Re: [Leica] JPEG or TIFF

[John Coan <jcoan@alumni.duke.edu>]

Speaking of TIFF files, remember the Montana fire picture I posted a
link to last week?  Well, I did some exploring and found a link buried
in the Web site for the US Dept. of the Interior, Bureau of Land
Management, Alaska Fire Service.  It was taken with a digital camera, so
I figure this 5.6 MB TIFF file is the original format, and the best
resolution of that picture we or anybody else is going to get. 

I wish I had a decent printer so I could make an "original" print and
display it.  

If anyone is interested here is the link and instructions on how to
download the picture.  The link is in an FTP directory so it's not as
simple as most Internet files to retrieve.  Let me know if you have
problems. 

Also, if anyone does get it who is a digital photography whiz how about
posting to the group something about the quality of the original file. 
IOW, how good is it?  If I were to take the file to a service bureau and
ask them to make an 11 x 14, would it look decent?  Or, should I stick
to 8 x 10?  

To get it click on http://fire.ak.blm.gov/

Then click on AFS FTP Site in the left frame.

Then click on jmac

The file name is elkbath.tif

 

John Poirier wrote:
> 
> Hi-
> TIFF is the way to go, as it uses lossless compression.  JPEG uses a
> "lossey" compression system.
> 
> When saving a JPEG file, you can choose the level of quality at which it
> is saved, which basically amounts to selecting the amount of compression
> to be applied. The more compression, the smaller the image file will be.
> However, increasing compression also increases the occurrence of
> artifacts such as poor colour rendition and pixellation.
> 
> A JPEG file saved at high quality can look just fine, but if you keep
> the image in that format and repeatedly open and save it there will be
> an ongoing loss of quality in terms of the artifacts mentioned above.
> The lower the quality setting, the more obvious the degradation will be.
> 
> If you are short on hard drive space, high quality JPEGs are not totally
> awful as a starter format while you're learning the ropes, but in the
> long run TIFF format and storage on CD-ROMs is a better bet.
> 
> If you do need major compression for storage purposes, there are
> proprietary systems such as Genuine Fractals (which I use) that provide
> much better compression and rescaling than JPEG.
> 
> John Poirier
> 
> "Lee, Jonathan" wrote:
> >
> > Luggers,
> >
> > I am just trying out a HP S20 scanner.  The software allows me to save files
> > in either TIFF or JPEG format. Is there any advantage in using one or ther
> > other, assuming the color and BW images will be exported to Photoshop for
> > manipulation and output.
> >
> > Jonathan Lee