Which format do you deliver in?

[M V]

JPEG, PNG, TIFF? Which format do you send your finals to your client?

[Scott Schroeder]

Depends on what they need. After talking with the client, many will tell you what format they want. If not, then deliver based on the intended use. Web images are jpegs, prints are usually tiffs if your client is going to use a commercial printer or send your render out to their, or 3rd party, marketing team.

[M V]

Is there more quality in a TIFF than in the highest quality setting JPEG?

[Scott Schroeder]

Absolutely, but viewing it on just a computer monitor may not yield much difference. Jpeg carries lossy compression, meaning that once you save you can't get back that information that was discarded in order to conserve file size. Tiff on the other hand does not have any compression, which means huge file sizes. Even if you do compress a Tiff, it uses lossless compression.

 

Which is why you want to know what you are using your file for. Web doesn't need to use uncompressed TIFFs, large commercial prints don't need jpegs.

 

A good reference site: http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/imagetypes.htm

[Nic H]

bet you cant tell the difference between a level 12 jpg and a tiff though can you

[Chris MacDonald]

It depends on its final use, if we're sending out for high res printing we'll send it out as a .tif, but anything other than that is usually .jpeg as clients often struggle to open various other graphic formats.

 

I think JPEG quality is just fine for most uses once you've done all of your post production, though I'd never use it (unless I had to) before the post production stage as there simply isn't enough bit depth to work with without introducing a fair amount of artifacts.

[adamopinheiro]

What about TGA?

[Sketchrender]

Can I ask what do you save out of your renderer as, I always use Tiff but they are massive , is it really necessary?

For saving out passes I mean for compositing.

 

Thank you

 

phil

[Scott Schroeder]

Well saving your render is a different subject than saving a file for a client. It also depends on how much post work you do. Uncompressed and lossless compression files can sustain more post work before they start to artifact and fall apart. Hopefully, in this day, no one is saving out of the box renders and sending them to clients as final.

 

For post production, I always use a half-float exr for still images. Hard drive space is cheap. If you don't want to deal with larger files, use a file format that has lossless compression. I tended to use Targa's back in the day. I didn't like how AE and PS dealt with PNG's transparency and I wanted the alpha channel from the Targa. If I am rendering video frames, I'll use Targa. I won't exr an animation frame as that will really jam up your hard drive space.

 

You really never want to save a jpeg render then do post on it, as Chris pointed out. You handcuff yourself with severe limitations due to jpeg's lossy compression. Sure, it looks good. But do some simple level adjustments to it and watch it fall apart.

 

For the client end, after post work, jpegs if they are just viewing them or going to web. Commercial prints are practically always tiffs, most commercial printers won't accept anything less. Again, this is commercial printing. Not Kinko's or the client's inkjet. Your client will know what file their printing service uses, so just ask them if there is any question.