[jmschrei]

I have been searching threads here and looking up things on line but I have some questions/thoughts to run by those of you with much more processing experience than I have.

First of all, I am using Aperture 3 as a workflow manager and for most of my RAW processing. I have been quite happy with this. After an initial triage I import files as referenced files, save and export the versions created in a variety ways depending on what I plan to do with them. I keep the original RAW files (but I am also becoming much more disciplined in regularly clearing out the photos that are not worth keeping at all).

Monochrome processing is an area of significant interest to me, so I wanted Silver Efex. Knowing that it does not yet work in Aperture 3 unless you switch to 32-bit, I decided to buy the stand alone utility and run it through Photoshop Elements 8 which I had but had never really used (the old laptop I bought it for would have choked trying to run it!). So I have PSE set up as an external editor and instruct Aperture to convert the file I want to work on to a 8 or 16-bit TIFF before sending it to PSE. After editing I save the file and it shows up in Aperture but is, of course saved in the original referenced file. So here are my questions:

When I send a 16-bit TIFF, when I save the Silver Efex filter effects I get a message warning me that it has to save the changes to the original file. I end up with a file about 75-80 MB. However PSE does not work well with 16-bit files so I imagine I would not have access to brushes and other features that can be employed in Silver Efex and make it a distinct advantage to run the program this way rather than as an Aperture plug-in. Make sense?

Okay, so I send an 8-bit TIFF, PSE creates layers, I work, save and end up with a file maybe 125 MB! So what is this if an 8-bit file is generally smaller than 16?

I have changed the setting for Siver Efex to merge the effects with the active layer rather than saving to a seperate layer but I still end up with a file over 100 MB! Is this typical? I am not short of space at this time and I do back up and archive files on external drives and media but I come from recently using a laptop with no elbow room for large files. What accounts for the size?

Other quick questions: Siver efex says that if you save the changes to a separate later you can go back and extract original data from the TIFF if desired. How is that possible?

Finally, out of curiousity I have imported RAW files directly into PSE, edited with the RAW converter then gone on to convert to B&W and when I save it I end up with an XMP document. What is this? And what is the difference between .tif and .tiff?

Sorry about all the questions, I am a slow learner when I introduce new software to my life, but it is fun.

-joe

[stevebrot]

I am not a PSE user (have it but have never used it), but I will wager a guess as to what is happening.

• Your super big TIFF files may be multi-page TIFFs with one page per layer
• The XMP is a so-called side-car file that contains the editing and other information (i.e. metadata) for the modified image.

The TIFF specification allow for some compression, but in general you should be prepared for large files. For 10 megapixels at 8 bit color depth, this translates to about a 30 megabyte file worst case. 16 bit will be about twice that size. Make a TIFF with four 10 megapixel layers...


Steve

[jmschrei]

I am not a PSE user (have it but have never used it), but I will wager a guess as to what is happening.

• Your super big TIFF files may be multi-page TIFFs with one page per layer
• The XMP is a so-called side-car file that contains the editing and other information (i.e. metadata) for the modified image.

The TIFF specification allow for some compression, but in general you should be prepared for large files. For 10 megapixels at 8 bit color depth, this translates to about a 30 megabyte file worst case. 16 bit will be about twice that size. Make a TIFF with four 10 megapixel layers...


Steve

That is sort of what I figured must be happening. I suppose I ought to figure out how to take advantage of these layers (or if this the best route for me use to access Silver Efex). I don't mind the large file for efforts I am especially pleased with but if I want to keep an edited image just "for the record", so to speak is there a way to extract a jpeg from a TIFF?

-Joe