Compressing Large Camera Files

[gurtch]

Greetings all: I use a Fuji GFX 100S and Sony A7RIV. When I shoot raw, I select "Lossless Compressed" format. This keeps the raw files to a smaller size. When I develop them, and finalize them in Photoshop or similar application, when I save them as TIFFs, it asks if I want to compress as "LZW or ZIP". I have always chosen to not compress them, but my internal drive is filling up fast. Can anyone tell me if I choose one or the other, will my files loose information when I "uncompress" them to print them or do further work on them? I am somewhat familiar with ZIP, as I have used it once in a while when down loading programs, etc. Thanks in advance.

Dave

 

[Alan]

Both are lossless. From memory, I think ZIP works on 16bit files where LZW doesn’t. I’ve also noticed that different programs are better at compression: 16bit ZIP TIFFs saved from Capture One get much smaller after re-saving in Photoshop.

 

[Charles2]

If you save the raw file, full or lossless compressed, then you can avoid saving any other large files. Just find the "sidecar" file, or script file, or the ".cof" and /cop" files (Capture One) -- and save them in an orderly manner. They let you re-develop the raw file exactly as before, and they are only a few kilobytes each.

You might want to keep selected .tif files, too, when you think you might well print them or make a new Web .jpg soon. But not the entire archive.

 

[Bill Caulfeild-Browne]

That's good advice, Charles 2.

 

[KC_2020]

And you'll benefit even more from moving them to an external drive. Irregardless of the platform you're running the OS and your app (PS etc.) needs scratch disk space and you're fragmenting / eliminating it by filling the Internal drive.

 

[gurtch]

I save to my internal drive initially, then when I get a number of files I transfer to triple redundant external drives. Thanks all.
Dave