tiff's blow - size sucks - need help

[andrewjohn81]

so the graphics department really likes tiff. Also, I need photoshop to read an alpha. It seems I'm stuck with Tiff or Tga right?
I love png, but photoshop doesn't read that correctly. It just goes ahead and applies the alpha. The same goes for exr. I like the size, from max, of exr the best, but we also don't work in a linear workflow, so the images saved as exr come out washed out.

Back to tif. I did a test and the file uncompressed is 97,670 KB. Compressed with packbits is 95,987 KB. Ooo, big compression ratio. ha
Save the same file out of photoshop using lzw compression and you get 12,045 KB. That's what i'm talking about. I'll be going from 2.4 gigs from 25 files to .325 gigs. Definitely worth it.

In future projects I suppose I could just make sure we always open up the unedited tif files and save them using photoshop. I'd like to do an action for it, but I can't get it to just overwrite the current file name. That would probably have to be a script and I don't have the skills.

I'm hoping someone knows of some software that will do it for me. Would be amazing if I could just do the whole server drive in one batch process over a weekend.

[percydaman]

tiffs out of max do suck size wise. I still use them though.

[andrewjohn81]

OK, I think the best solution is FastStone Photo Resizer. I can probably talk my manager in to purchasing at least a couple licenses. It's free for home use though. Otherwise 20 bucks.
If you render out a bunch of high res tiff's might be a good look.
It batch saves (can save over the original) tiff and can use lzw compression, among others.

Let me know if someone comes across something even easier/better.

[beestee]

You might want to check out creating and using a droplet in Photoshop:

http://www.alexgrantz.com/2009/09/08...sing-droplets/

[andrewjohn81]

sure, droplets are nice, but the problem I have with actions is you can't do a lot of actions as 'relative.'

In my case, how do you do a relative path? I can throw a tiff at it, but it always saves it in the same directory. All I want it photoshop to open my tiff, then use save as... to save over the same tiff with lzw compression.

But when you use the save as... command in actions I haven't figured out a way to make it save over the same file unless you always have the same file in the same directory. It seems to make the name relative, but not the path.

If you know another way to add LZW compression to a tiff in photoshop I'm up for that. Then I could actually make use of droplets/actions.

BTW, thanks for the tip about droplets. I didn't know about that. I use actions a lot. It might be nice to just run the action just by dragging and dropping, then going to get my coffee. Currently it takes a while to open photoshop first, set up the batch, Then go get my coffee. Droplets will help me be caffeinated a few minutes sooner.

[joconnell]

How about something like the batch mode in xnview? Tis free and a really handy image browser too!

[andrewjohn81]

I might try that one since it's a decent browser as well, however it's only free for personal use. I work at a pretty large company, so definitely want to keep things legal.
Plus, I like helping out the smaller software companies that don't ask an insane amount of money for their software.

[crazy homeless guy]

This is along shot... If you have Ifran View installed, you may want to add this dll. It lets you right click, and convert image files directly in file explorer. I think you can convert to LZW tiff file.

So.. I am guessing you might be able to select a group of tiff files, right click, and tell it to convert to tiff with LZW compression.

But again, I didn't test this.
http://www.baxbex.com/images/shoots/irfanview.html
http://www.baxbex.com/products.html (at bottom)

The forum post that I read this concept in..
http://www.donationcoder.com/Forums/...prev_next=next

[andrewjohn81]

Also a good option. But you have to pay for that one too.

Other than Picasa, there really is no free image viewer you can legally use at work. I've got Adobe Bridge, since that comes with photoshop, but I don't think that can do it either unless you use photoshop. And...I am pretty sure we need a script to do that unless you want to write the files to the same location every time.

I think I'd pick Xnview over most anyway. It even has a plug for illustrator. My coworkers want ACDsee though. Not sure why @ 100 dollars. Really? Maybe I'm not in the know, but I do not think that is worth that much. I know programmers work really hard, but you really have to price things in relation to competing products. Doesn't photoshop elements do most everything that does? btw, elements image browser is actually pretty slick. Why isn't adobe browser that good?

[crazy homeless guy]

Does this work..... I think you start it out of Bridge, but then it automatically takes care of the PS part.
http://www.5min.com/Video/How-to-Use...e-CS3-86624693

[andrewjohn81]

OMG, they didn't have that option before. I believe it's the same kind of thing using Dr. Brown's plugin.
That solves my problem. Thank You crazy homeless guy. (never thought I'd use that sentence. ha)

Now if only they'd put a couple more options in the layer comps to files option. You can't save a tiff without layers. Bleh! That makes for some gigantic tiffs.

[andrewjohn81]

Spoke too soon.

It won't overwrite the image. You can say that you want the original tif in the same location, but if it was named thisTiff_01.tiff then the new one will now be called thisTiff_01_1.tiff

This naming convention is also kind of crappy because in many applications it will count 1,2,3,4, but in others it will count 1,10,11,2,3,4 which is why I always prefer a fixed amount of digits like 001, depending on the estimated number of images/files.

[glyph]

cant you just save into a different directory so they dont get renamed then drag the new files onto the old ones ?
- is it worth trying after effects or whatever happened to um .. damn forgotten the name.. debabeliser - but then it got renamed when Kinetix bought it - yeah ok that probably got dropped years ago..

I seem to remember Sorenson Squueze can do single image conversion from a designated directory, er, though maybe not tiff

yup Max and tiffs dont play nicely

[crazy homeless guy]

yup Max and tiffs dont play nicely

I always thought it was because LZW compression is proprietary, and needs licensed to use. AutoDesk or Kinetix never licensed it, so LZW has never been included. I could be imagining that though.

...even then, it seems like someone would have released a tif output plugin that allows for LZW compression, but I have never seen one.

[Preisler]

If you know another way to add LZW compression to a tiff in photoshop I'm up for that. Then I could actually make use of droplets/actions.

Hi andrewjohn81!

You can do it with droplets and actions - here is how:

Create action:
1) Create new action and begin recording.
2) Open any tif file.
3) Save as Tiff with lzw compression and overwrite the file.
4) Close.
5) stop recording.

Droplet:
1) Create droplet.
2) Choose destination for droplet.
3) Select the action and turn on "Override Action Open Commands" and "Suppress File Open Options Dialogs".
4) Destination = "Save and Close".
5) Turn on "Override Action Save As Commands".
6) Ok

... and now you can drag any tiff file from any location to the droplet and it will save/overwrite with the lzw version to the same location where it came from.

Preisler