Best workflow to go from camera RAW to uncompressed TIFF

[Benergizer]

I want to deliver uncompressed 16-bit TIFF files to a client (unfortunately, I don't know the specifics on how they will be printed, like size, paper stock, etc..,) so I would like to give them the best image I can, then they can do what they need to on their end to meet their print needs. So I'm trying to work out the best workflow. There are 12 images I need to deliver, so I was going to batch process them into 16-bit TIFF files (from the RAW files), then open them in Affinity Photo to edit. 

 

Keeping in mind that AP can't export uncompressed TIFFs, what's the best workflow from this point? Open in AP, edit, save as TIFF with layers, then flatten, and deliver as is? Assuming that the TIFF I'm working with is uncompressed. 

 

Or , edit, save as TIFF with layers, then open in Preview and save as an uncompressed TIFF? Is there anyway to work with the photo in AP's file format, then get it back to an uncompressed TIFF? 

 

Not sure if I'm over complicating things, but all I really want to do is Take my RAW file, edit in Affinity Photo, and deliver an uncompressed TIFF. (The client actually requested a EPS file, because they will use Illustrator at some point, but that's not my problem lol.)

 

Thanks for the help.

[walt.farrell]

I'm curious why you want uncompressed TIFF files. The compression is lossless, so the only real difference should be in the physical file size, unless your client can't open the compressed files for some reason.

 

Also, from what I've read here it's not clear that using batch processing to process raw files will give the results you expect. For only a dozen images it might be better to process them individually, instead.

 

Finally, standard TIFF files don't have layers, so I wouldn't count on a client being able to properly handle a TIFF file saved with layers from Affinity Photo. Doing that might require that they also have the Affinity application.

[Benergizer]

Thanks for the reply. Well, I think I just chose uncompressed TIFF because I wanted to give them the best quality image I could, so they the most flexibility afterwards, if they needed to alter anything. I since I know they will be printed in some way. But if the compression (I thought I read that it used LZW) I guess I could just export as a standard TIFF out of Affinity then.

 

Yeah, I wasn't sure how long each initial RAW adjustments would take, so opted on doing a batch. But they actually didn't end up taking too long, so just doing them individually in AP would have probably been better. In fact, I might still do that.

 

In, that case, I guess the best workflow would be: Process RAW in Affinity, develop, edit, export to TIFF?

[Michael Naylor]

But you can't save or export as uncompressed TIFF, but only as LZW compressed - which often produces larger files and can be incompatible with other software if 16bit.

[Tasman Skies]

LZW compression will NOT "often" produce larger files. It will only produce larger files (than uncompressed TIFF) if the image is very random data (in which case, it isn't an image any longer, arguably!). As has already been said, LZW compression is lossless (unlike JPEG compression) so there is absolutely no quality degradation in using LZW Compressed TIFFs.

And what software cannot open compressed TIFFs that can open uncompressed TIFFs? Maybe there were some compatibility bugs 25 years ago when photo editing apps were a new thing but I'd be super surprised to discover a current app that would consider compressed TIFFs made by Affinity Photo 'incompatible'

Yes, the workflow as described - Process RAW in Affinity, develop, edit, export to (compressed) TIFF - is just fine