Thomas T. Veldhouse added these comments in the current
discussion du jour ...

Hardly any cameras support TIFF. Yes, you can use EXIF with
LZW ... the are completely unrelated as far as TIFF is
concerned.

I stand/sit corrected, Thomas! I just tried an LZW TIFF from PSP
9. It gave me a warning that no EXIF would be saved, but in fact,
it was. I reopened it and all my Rebel data was there along with
a comment to an editable field. Thanks for letting me know about
this- I always stopped when I saw the warning.

I don't want to start yet another religious war about
bit-length. It seems to me, though, that 16-bit color - no
matter where it comes from or in what format(s) it is saved
to - is a subject for VERY advanced people who have software
that can correctly manipulated it. And, the person behind the
camera and behind the keyboard also has to be quite a bit
more knowledgeable to gain any real advantage over 8-bit.

It doesn't take VERY advanced to use 16-bit. Anybody who
wants to shoot camera RAW should understand a workflow that
[potentially] uses 16-bit image manipulation.

I said I don't want to start any religious wars, and I will not.
But, going from 8-bit software to 16-bit costs money I don't want
to spend, and my personal skill level is woefully inadequate to
know what to do with 16-bit, much less RAW.

In this NG, people run the gamut from rank novices to very
advanced amateurs to pros, with all types and prices of cameras,
and software as simple as Irfanview or as complex, expensive, and
difficult to learn as PS CS. So, /I/ do not think that making the
jump to either 16-bit or RAW is at all trivial. I take nothing
away from you or anyone who's mastered it, but sometimes we
humans forget the difficulties we had the the steepness of the
learning curve. I would've long ago gone to RAW if I could find
even ONE book that explained how to properly use it that was NOT
aimed specifically at PhotoShop. There is no straight-forward way
I know of to translate the workflow into PSP 9. I do not like how
Corel mangled PSP X and PSP XI, so have not gone to them. I will
probably cut over to PS Elements when I get my next computer, but
that most likely is a year away.

So, I would ask you or anyone implying that 16-bit and RAW are
simple to learn to consider the needs, wants, and time budget of
us lesser homo sapiens. Thank you.

But, I have a question for you Thomas: everytime 16-bit color
comes up, part of the raging debate is that most/all cameras
and apps, including PS CS2, really only have 11 or 12 bits of
real information, the others being basically just noise that
is ignorned by the software. Has that improved in ANY format,
whether it be JPEG, TIFF, or RAW? i.e., is something closer
to 16-bit or true 16-bit now available for them with deep
pockets? If so, could you just give me 25 words or less as a
heads-up on today's status so I can go looking? Yes, I know
Google is my best friend, but on things like this, it is like
the old saying "I don't even know enough to ask an
intelligent question", and it goes to the extreme frustration
I have had for well over a year trying to find a RAW for
Dummies kind of book that isn't keyed to PS CS2 or Elements
that will at least get me started up the learning curve.

You don't get more information by converting a 12-bit RAW file
to a 16-bit TIFF (or PSD). You would definitely lose
information if you converted to an 8-bit TIFF and you would
lose even more information if you converted to an 8-bit JPEG
(all JPEG images are 8-bit). As far as the benefits of a
16-bit workflow, I will leave that for another discussion
which has been hashed about here before and is available in
many books and online resources.

You didn't quite answer my question. What I am curious about is
if any cameras or scanners can output a FULL 16-bit color bitmap
and are there any apps that can process all 16 across their
entire function/tool/feature set. I understand the loss if a 12-
bit RAW is downgraded to 8-bit anything, especially JPEG, so I'm
still in inquisative mode.

Now, I have never met anyone who didn't think their own pictures
could be made better. I've not asked you, but then, we don't know
each other well. But, I use both the 80/20 Rule and the Law of
Diminshing Returns to govern how much time and effort to devote
to any editing task. Some of my car pictures are easy enough to
do in a few minutes, most are in the 15-20 minute range, and a
sizable enough number get into 30, 60, more. Since I am a
documentary rather than a creative or artistic photographer of
cars, I have many other interests than spending all day on a
small series of cars shot at an outdoor show or museum with or
without flash. Again, people hereabouts run a really wide gamut
of skills, but much more importantly, not everybody wants, much
less needs, all the sophistication. My daughter, for example,
does just a quicky crop and resame down and takes here SD card to
Meijer to print 4x6. That's all she wants. I can't argue with her
logic even though I disagree because she's an adult who has the
freedom to do what she pleases with her time and money.

In any event, I find these threads fascinating but always
feel bad for the poor OP who has some simple or easy question
like he does the size of the image or compression cause
image problems? I kinda doubt that level of knowledge is
ready for all of the sophisticated answers the more
experienced folks have been bantering about. Yes, /I/ learn
something, but a rank novice just gets totally snowed under
and may feel so intimidated as to not even come back for a
2nd round of questions.

The simple answer to a "simple" question is "yes". But, if
you want to know why, then you have to read.

/I/ know that both size and compression have a greater or lesser
effect on final technical quality, but did the OP in this thread?
His OP was down so low in the grass, he wanted just a simple
recommendation as to how to start taking "good" pictures, and
never came back - I don't think - to even clarify his criteria
for "good".

--
HP, aka Jerry