Best Format For Stamp Collection Tiff Or Jpg ?

A friend of mine told me I should keep the files in TIF format, so by opening and saving again I keep the file integrity.
JPEG files will loose details after multiple openings/ savings.

I read this somewhere, as I believe, one only loses details if EDITING and saving, would this be correct?

Any members explain the pros and cons of either please?

My Jpegs have been fine for the past 15 years, no deterioration I can see, after opening hundreds of times.

I scan 600dpi individual stamps, and 200dpi for an album page

I have always thought TIFF is a waste of (my) computer space
dealing with stamp images, album pages.

I can understand that opening, editing, saving could gradually deteriorate the integrity of the file, but not just opening/closing.

I can see why you would open, save, close unless you were editing too. If not editing, just open and close shouldn't affect the file.

jpg - this format is compressed and lossy. That means when the file was created a lot of information was removed. The amount of information removed depends on what % quality you save the file with. But even if you save at 100% you lose information, that's the nature of a jpg. That's also why jpg's generally have a small file size. jpg is typically good enough, especially if you saved it at 90-100%. It may not be good enough if some time in the future you need to greatly enlarge a portion of the image, say 200-300% (and you don't own the stamp anymore).

tif - this format is uncompressed and lossless (there are also compressed versions). This is a good format for archival purposes where you want to save every bit of information that was captured in the scan. It takes up a lot of room but you do not lose any detail, up to the resolution you originally scanned at.

Opening and closing either file type will not result in any loss. Even rotating at 90 degree intervals will not result in any loss. The latter assumes your graphic program is less than 15-20 years old.

Thanks for the replies.
I guess a factor would include, as you say, future use of files.
A collector with a dedicated collection of say 100 pages, may be influenced to save with TIFF, but a collector or auction dealer
with an excess of 100,000 images would use JPEG.

I just optimised a 3Mb page down to 200Kb and there is hardly any noticeable difference.
Take that over 100,000 images and the size is considerable.

I totally support what Germania said.

I would like to add that if you choose jpg, give a try with png. It is less aggressive than jpg and to do so doesn't deteriorate the image that much.

https://goscf.com/t/47650
Don

1200 x 600, 157KB, saved at 60% and it's beautiful....

Hi Rodney

Here are a few links about Image Files:

https://blog.hubspot.com/insiders/d...-image-files

https://kinsta.com/blog/image-file-types/

https://matthews.sites.wfu.edu/misc...formats.html

When I finish my project Stamp Tag I have to insert the StampTag buffer into an image file. So I have to research each file to know where to insert the buffer. (I will have to dig into the actual formats).

Jerry B

Jerry B

Hard drive space is so cheep nowdays and computers so fast why worry. If you want the best quality I would stick to tiff. But if you want smaller files then png is OK as it is a lossless format and you do not degrade images when resaving.

My cameras produce image files of about 40 MB each. I can store getting on to 100,000 on a 4TB spinning drive that costs considerably less than £100 and probably even less across the Atlantic.

Morning Jerry.
thank you, enjoy reading that.

I am happy with my setup, I was just curious to hear that opening and closing a JPG would lose clarity.
Nice to hear that is proven false.

I will always use JPG with an average around 220Kb per stamp, suits me.
clarity is good and I can find a single image within seconds.

I am dealing with 800,000 images total, >250,000 working block.

That suits me for access, clarity, and back up time
(about 1.5 Hrs)
That is the sweet spot for my Ext drive, computer power, and budget.

quote
Unfortunately, many website owners still don't understand which image file types to choose for different use cases. The result? They end up slowing down their site loading speed because their images aren't the best format available, nor are optimized.

Why not use a backup program that only backs up files that are new or have been changed. - Something like Free File Sync. Which is what I use.

You do not need to back up everthing each time

I always scan and save in TIFF because it I feel it important to have the highest highest quality image in my archive. Years ago I got tired of rescanning the same stamps when I needed a higher quality image. If my archive has the highest quality images it is always easy to 'optimize' or otherwise reduce the quality for various uses. That is not something I can do if my archive has lower quality images.
Don

A very fair comment Anthra,
comes from an early fail many years ago with a backup program, and lost data (Win98)
Never trusted since.
However, always happy to learn and shall give "free file sync" a try.
Mind you, I always have 3 copies, so the 2nd BU will always be "copy" but maybe I can extend that to quarterly.

Don,
understand you preference, seeing the quality of "Stampsmarter"

My database is more for ID and retrieval, as a means of quickly sorting stamps, and global searching . Top quality is not a requisite.

Free file sync
https://freefilesync.org/download.php

I do this stuff for a living. First, the simple act of opening and editing and closing a file does not do anything to it "wear" wise. It's what you do to the sizing and resolution that can have a detrimental effect. The easiest way to picture it is a photo on a Xerox machine. What happens when you blow that pic up? Right -- it gets all blurry, or pixelated. And if you reduce the size, the image stays sharp. Mainly, the difference between TIF and JPG is generally speaking, TIFs are largely most suitable for high-resolution press printing because they retain far more digital info than a JPG. JPGs are kargely most suitable for computer screens, whose maximum resulotion is 72 dpi. If you have an 5-inch image at 72dpi, it will display at 5" (or 1:1) because screen resolution tops out at 72dpi. A 5" image at 300dpi will display a physical size four times larger (around 20") onscreen, That TIF file will also be massively huge as well, because of all the digital data in that file. So all in all,unless you're doing high-resolution image printing on a printing press or high-end copier, there's absolutely no reason to be using TIFs.

The pixel density of desktop monitors is typically 92-109 dpi with the better monitors going up to 140 dpi (96 dpi has been the default and standard Windows density since Windows Vista). And of course pixel density for smaller displays (i.e. smart phones) is even higher.

I do very little printing of my images and there is a very good reason to use TIFFs, I scan into a personal image archive where I want the highest quality image. The reason is simple and obvious, I can always decrease the image quality/resolution/size if needed but I have to rescan if I have previously saved in some compressed format. I got tired of rescanning stamps and covers (have scanned over 2 million) when I needed a better quality image. I saves me time and money to archive uncompressed, high quality TIFFs and cheap storage options make it feasible.
Don