[t_hah]

If I have an image in 8-bit TIFF format, and I saved it in 256 color GIF would I loose quality, colors? If I understand correctly 8-bit TIFF uses 2^8 colors, which is the same number a GIF would use. Can someone help me out here, please?

Thank you,


t

[Carp]

Originally posted by t_hah:
If I have an image in 8-bit TIFF format, and I saved it in 256 color GIF would I loose quality, colors? If I understand correctly 8-bit TIFF uses 2^8 colors, which is the same number a GIF would use. Can someone help me out here, please?

Thank you,


t

I think you are losing some quality, because GIF uses compression for saving and TIFF normally don't.

I leave normally all my orginal images as TIIFs or PSD's and save them to CD.

[Simon Mundy]

Originally posted by Carp:
I think you are losing some quality, because GIF uses compression for saving and TIFF normally don't.

I leave normally all my orginal images as TIIFs or PSD's and save them to CD.

GIF is a lossless format, as is PNG. The only way you would lose image data is if you saved it with the 'lossy' format (and that is usually rare).

You should be just fine, just make sure you save out your GIF in a program where you can compare the 'before' and 'after' to make sure your colour range hasn't shifted. GIF can use many ways to determine the colour range (Perceptual, Adaptive, Web, etc...), so experiment a bit before committing yourself.

PNG may be a good way to go, as you could save it out in 8-bit mode and have absolutely no loss.