Digital Slimdown, Part 1, Moving From PSD to TIFF
Digital Slimdown, Part 1, Moving From PSD to TIFF
For Digital Scrapbookers
by Jen White
Storage is cheap nowadays, but if you’re not wanting to waste it, consider saving your layered scrapbook pages as TIFF files instead of PSD files. This can save you a considerable amount of disk space. Here’s what you need to know.
🟠 File Format (Extentions) — PSD vs TIFF
• PSD stands for Photoshop Document. Intended to be used with Adobe apps to retain maximum editability of a layered document.
• TIFF stands for Tagged Image File Format. It’s universally friendly with all apps and digital scrapbookers will find that it also retains maximum editability.
NOTE: TIFF and TIF are universally interchangeable.
• Some experts recommend working in PSD format but saving your final project in TIFF format. For digital scrapbookers, this is not necessary.
• My Advice–Do yourself a favor and keep it simple. Choose a format and stick with it. Keep reading . . .
• PSD has a file size limit of 2GB (if more is needed, switch to PSB).
• TIFF has a file size limit of 4GB.
• My Advice–Don’t let this worry you. The average scrapbooker will never exceed 2GB. I’ll show you more ways to slim down while scrapbooking in a later blogpost.
🟠 The TIFF Advantage
There is come confusion with the TIFF format. A quick Google search will tell you that TIFF files can have a higher file size than PSD files. But if you keep drilling down, you’ll see that it all depends on the TIFF options you choose. Take a look . . .
Above is a comparison of a basic layered scrapbook page. I saved the same page in three different formats: PSD, TIFF (RLE), and TIFF (ZIP).
• RLE and ZIP are the two Layer Compression choices for TIFF files. Don’t let the word “compression” trip you up. This compression is ‘lossless’. It’s similar to “zipping” a file; the file is not changed.
• RLE compression is the default setting when saving as a TIFF file, but it doesn’t help when trying to lower your file size. It’s also the faster of the two Layer Compressing choices.
• ZIP compression is the choice you want when trying to lower the size of your file. The only downside is that you will wait a tad bit longer for your file to save.
So if you’re looking for a digital slimdown, then the choice is clear. TIFF with ZIP compression will always see a dramatic reduction in filesize when paired with layered scrapbook pages.
How To Save a Layered Scrapbook Page as a TIFF File
- In Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, chose File > Save or File > Save As.
- In the Save As dialog box, set the Format to TIFF. Click Save.
- In the TIFF Options dialog box, set the Image Compression to None, the Pixel Order to Interleaved, the Byte Order to match your operating system, and the Layer Compression to ZIP. Uncheck both Save Image Pyramid and Use BigTIFF Format. Click OK.
✅ Are you planning to start saving as TIFF instead of PSD? Let me know in a comments below.
✅ Will you go back and convert your old PSD files to TIFF? If so, let me know how much disk space you saved in a comment below.
Digital Slimdown Series:
Part 1: Moving from PSD to TIFF
Part 2: Deleting Hidden Layer
Part 3: Cropping the Edges
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Author: Jen White | Contact Us
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As you know, I am a HUGE .tiff fan, I can never understand why everyone doesn’t use it. Tiff owes me commission for all the plugs I give them 🙂 The only difference, when I save I don’t save “No compression” I choose LZW (far smaller file size)?
Another huge file size save I have found recently, sadly probably only for PS users, is a script which deletes document ancestors – you can see the info in File Info by clicking on Raw Data, I regularly saw “too large to show”. I am NO techie, but I gather that PS records and stores all sorts of history in each file. I now regularly run the script whenever I do a final save. Not wanting to post a link, Google “DeleteDocAncestors script for Photoshop” It’s free.
I am going to try this but I have a huge amount of PSD files. To open them all and resave to TIFF would probably take the rest of my life. I will definitely do it going forward.
What happens if you want to go back and reedit a file and you have saved to TIFF Zip?
Great question, Nancy. TIFF (ZIP) works exactly the same as PSD when opening. You may have to tell your computer to associate that file type with your version of PS/PSE.
I have been using TIFF format for years and have had no issues at all. I love it when designers have that option for templates. (Hint hint: could Digital Scrapper also offer templates in TIFF formats?) 😊
I hear you, Loretta. Meryl has been offering her templates in TIFF. I personally do PSD because it’s just a habit.
We will do TIFF or PSD, but not both. To have both is a waste of space on our servers. 😊
I save all my templates in both PSD and TIFF. Required where I sell them.
Strangely, I don’t often use them or save my files in TIFF.
Maybe I will going forward.
I have been using the TIFF format since I discovered the file size difference (a few years ago. I also like that I don’t have to open the TIFF file to see what it looks like, it shows the same as a jpeg.
You just sold me with the point that you can see the image on the thumbnail!! That is amazing!
Thank you Jen. Karen Shultz had something years ago about saving in TIFF. I’ve been doing it ever since. However, a little differently. I’m going to PM you my way and see if you can explain the difference. Cause I have no idea. Haha
I use TIFF also as my Windows 11 shows my pages, when it doesn’t show the PSD ones. Thanks for the heads up about saving the Tiff as a zip. Works great.
Looking forward to trying this! Is there an action to reduce or “trim” off the papers, etc. that “hang off” the edge of pages?
Let me know how you like it, Nancy! Cropping is another things we’ll be covering in this series. The problem with a simple action for that is that some layer styles may be affected negatively with a simple crop. I’ll cover that in the post.
But Jen as Veruca Salt would say. “I WANT IT NOW”! 😂
😂
I’ve been saving as .tiff files for years. I’ve never had any problems going back to them and editing. It’s great to have templates available in a .tiff format!
Thank you very much, Jen, for the details explaining how to save to TIFF. I tried it another time without the settings you show, and I saw very little difference, so it didn’t make sense to change my workflow. I just now tried your settings, on a double page, and there was a huge difference, and I’ll be using the TIFF zip. I was also glad to see the file wasn’t “zipped” and unable to see the thumbnail picture.
I can totally understand why you bypassed it earlier. Good for you for giving it another try!
I am intrigued and will definitely investigate & experiment. Right now I am working on a wedding album for a granddaughter so ‘playtime’ will come later. I recently purchased a solid state 2 TB external drive that is blazing fast and takes everything I throw at it so I am not ‘hurting’ for space. I usually off-load the .psds while keeping the .jpg pages on my laptop. I would like having the .psds more ‘accessible’ tho. If there is significant reduction of size for my .psds, I will gradually convert all I have.
Like Meryl Bartho I always save as TIFF and use the LZW compression. After reading Jen’s Digital Slimdown, I tried saving a file I recently completed and saved as a TIFF with LZW compression. That file size was 94 MB. When I saved as a TIFF with no compression the file size went to 121 MB. I make edits to my TIFF files all the time without any problems or glitches. I, too, learned to save my pages as TIFF files from Karen Schulz many years ago like Rachelle Guiremand stated. Thanks, Jen, for your informative Digital Slimdown!
Caution: if resaving psd files to this tiff version: When I resaved from psd to tiff, the new creation date became the current date I saved to tiff, not the actual creation date of the psd.
Interesting that you would bring that up, Beverly.
There are three dates associated with a file–Date Created, Date File Created, and Date File Modified.
The Date Created date does not change, the other two do.
I have the date in my filenames, and my files are sorted by filename. So this is not an issue for me.
But if you are sorting by date, you may also want to change the date of the file.
You are correct about the 3 associated dates. I wanted to post screenshots here, to show what happened to mine, but unable to do that. The tiff file dates are all the same, today (when I resaved it). If I’m missing something, Jen, please let me know how to fix it, or where to see it. I’m looking at the file data in Finder View.
Beverly, you cannot change the Created date in Finder. You have to do so with an app.
While I do not change the dates of my PSD or TIFF files, I do sometimes have to change the date of JPG files. I do so in Adobe Bridge. HOW: In the Content panel, Right click on an image and choose Edit Capture Time.
Thank you Jen! Spending time doing that isn’t a wise use of time, so going forward, I’ll save new files in tiff and not resave the psd files.
This is very very useful as the script suggetion too, thanks for sharing.