Outafocus wrote:Chris - You inadvertantly touched on a question I have had for months and no one could answer it on the other forums. When I process 16MB RAW files from my Sony A580 in the Sony RAW converter and send them to PhotoShop 7.0 as a .tiff file, they arrive as a 90+ MB file. It's hard to imagine why they increase in size so much but, you say this is normal? The only way I have found to get around this is to convert to .jpg files, send them to PS, and then save them as a .tiff file. Somehow I feel I'm doing something wrong here. Can you please explain?
1) Check whether you are sending them as 8-bit or 16-bit to PS. Normally Nikon, Canon, Sony, etc cameras capture RAW images at 12-bit depth, some higher end cameras can capture images at 14-bit depth. However in software such as Photoshop they only use 8, 16 or 32-bits. So you have a choice, when you work with RAW files, 'convert' them to 8-bit potentially losing some tiny bits of information (not really noticeable to the naked eye) or work as 16-bit files (bloating the filesize a bit) but potentially gaining the ability to work with a wider colorspace/details (Adobe RGB, ProPhoto).
2) I wouldn't really worry about the TIFF filesize unless the computer wasn't powerful enough to handle it, which isn't the case with most computers these days.
3) One thing however I wouldn't do: convert to jpg files for editing. To me, jpg files must only exist as the final output (if I need to send the images to someone) at the end of my workflow.
