IT Advice please. Tiff files.

[Psamathe]

With a Mac, you open it in Preview, and Shift/Cmd/S to save it in the location of your choice but select JPG.

Side note: if you've updated to Mavericks, "Save As" isn't an option in Preview - the command is "Export" and there isn't a keyboard shortcut for it (mind you, it's relatively trivial to add your own keyboard shortcut, but I found it a tad annoying as that's the main use I have for Preview).

All you have to do (in Mavericks Preview) is to use File>Duplicate and then you have the Save ... option available (which asks you where to save with the File Save dialog).

Ian

[bigjim]

Thanks for all the advice and info.
I have tried a couple of the suggestions but not found them particularly user friendly or maybe its me being a bit dumb.
However somebody has come up with a copy of Photoshop CS3 and lightroom for me which seem to do the job.
Still think it is a big failing of Picasa not to support Tiff properly as it is the most user friendly program I have used.
Thanks again for your time. Jim.

[LollyKat]

[url=http://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDetail.htm]Tiff files are big - if you save them as PNG the files will be smaller but you won't loose quality. For printing you may still need to save them as JPGs, though.

Noooo! PNG files most definitely lose quality, and are not designed for photos. Also, a JPEG loses quality every time you save, even if no changes are made. Leave them in TIF until you are sure they are correct.

Sorry, I wasn't very clear, was I....

What I meant was that during the editing process he could make intermediate saves if he wants to as PNG (which are smaller than TIFF), then when ready to output for printing save as a high-quality JPEG.

Compared to JPEG, PNG excels when the image has large, uniformly colored areas. Even for photographs – where JPEG is often the choice for final distribution since its compression technique typically yields smaller file sizes – PNG is still well-suited to storing images during the editing process because of its lossless compression. (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_file_formats)

It depends on how much space the OP has on his machine - XP suggests that it is quite old, like mine. I use Photoshop Elements but it can produce very large files, depending on how much I've tinkered with it. Once I'm satisfied with the result I often save as a PNG. Then I can resize and save as JPEGs of varying compression depending on what I need. I always keep the original RAW files just in case.

[rfryer]

It depends on how much space the OP has on his machine - XP suggests that it is quite old, like mine. I use Photoshop Elements but it can produce very large files, depending on how much I've tinkered with it. Once I'm satisfied with the result I often save as a PNG. Then I can resize and save as JPEGs of varying compression depending on what I need. I always keep the original RAW files just in case.

That's where Lightroom scores. All the edits are saved as metadata; the original image is never touched and updated versions are not saved. The full edit history of an image is always available, and you can always undo steps.

When you want to do something with your images, you perform a separate "export" step which genrates final images using whatever parameters (size, quality, format) you choose. It's great being able to edit with no worries about loss in quality!

[Dean]

With a Mac, you open it in Preview, and Shift/Cmd/S to save it in the location of your choice but select JPG.

Side note: if you've updated to Mavericks, "Save As" isn't an option in Preview - the command is "Export" and there isn't a keyboard shortcut for it (mind you, it's relatively trivial to add your own keyboard shortcut, but I found it a tad annoying as that's the main use I have for Preview).

All you have to do (in Mavericks Preview) is to use File>Duplicate and then you have the Save ... option available (which asks you where to save with the File Save dialog).

Ian

I know. But it adds a pointless extra step which I couldn't be bothered with. It did lead to me learning how to add my own keyboard shortcuts, so it was a win overall.