TIFF format

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rjlittlefield
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Post by rjlittlefield »

mawyatt wrote:The RAW files were specified as uncompressed in the D800E, and vary from 77.4MB to 79.5MB. The TIFF files created in LR from these RAW files are all the same size, 216.9MB!! The final stacked rendering from Zerene is also 216.9MB!!
These numbers I can explain.

Thom Hogan's "Complete Guide to the Nikon D800/D800E" (page 184) lists "74.4 MB" as being a typical size for an FX 14-bit NEF with no compression. He also notes that:
NEF file sizes vary with the amount of detail in a scene. The more detail in the scene, the larger the file will be. These sizes are therefore approximate. The less detail in the scene, the smaller the file will be. Remember that your JPEG settings (mostly sharpening and noise reduction) will impact the size of the embedded JPEG, too. Most NEF file sizes do tend to be within 15% of the number I report here.
FX pixel count is 7360x4912 = 36,152,320 pixels.

16-bit TIFF files produced by Zerene Stacker will have 6 bytes per pixel, giving 6*36,152,320 = 216,913,920 bytes for image data. There will be some added to that for headers and color profile, plus any metadata that is copied from the source images. These files do not contain thumbnails and by default are not compressed, so there should be little or no variability.

Given that the file sizes are the same, I expect that this description applies to the Lightroom TIFFs also.

--Rik

mawyatt
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Post by mawyatt »

So what we have here is a D800 RAW file that varies slightly in size with the scene details but when a TIFF file is created by LR from the D800 RAW file the TIFF is a constant size.

However, with a D800 in camera created TIFF file the size varies?

Interesting indeed :roll:

rjlittlefield
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Post by rjlittlefield »

I'm curious -- can you spell out what parts of this you find particularly interesting?

--Rik

mawyatt
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Post by mawyatt »

That the LR TIFF files from the D800 RAW files are constant size as expected, even with the variable RAW files size and the Nikon D800 TIFF files vary in size.

rjlittlefield
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Post by rjlittlefield »

On quick scan, it looks to me like Lightroom does not include a JPEG thumbnail, while the camera does.

There may be other differences too. With some difficulty, those could be teased out by using a TIFF dumping program to show the tag structure so you can see what's actually in there.

BTW, have you heard the one that "TIFF" actually stands for "Thousands of Incompatible File Formats" ? :roll:

--Rik

mawyatt
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Post by mawyatt »

Ok I've figured out why the Nikon TIFF has the additional JPEG. It's because the camera uses a JPEG for the display, makes sense!!

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