Hi James, Many thanks for this very informative response to Ray's question. This is of great help to me as I have thousands of digitized birth/death/marriage/divorce acts and I have been pondering this very same question.
I have already converted all my document photos from jpg to TIFF, and can find no problem, except for the time, to further convert to PNG. Excellent presentation for which I am grateful James. Kind regards, Philippe C 2010/1/9 James Devenish <[email protected]> > > Hi Ray, > > On 08/01/2010, Ray Forma <[email protected]> wrote: > > My current big concern is in what format to store my photo files. I > > currently store them as uncompressed TIFF files, a format that has > > been with us for a long time. Can anyone suggest a better format? > > TIFF is a good format because it is publicly documented, has been in > use for at least 20 years, can be read with open source software > written in the C programming language (which has remained popular for > 40 years and still underpins a vast amount of current software), and > moreover it is basically a wrapper around "raw" image data. However, > it's certainly not my favourite format, and because it's extensible, > incompatibilities can creep in. > > A better format would may be PNG, which although being much newer, is > in some regards the modern successor to TIFF. It's: > - openly-specified > - non-proprietary > - patent-free > - has been standardised by the ISO > - is readable by open-source C software > - is "lossless" > - is already a pervasively-supported format on the world wide web > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Network_Graphics>. > > I believe that for these reasons, the National Archives of Australia > converts TIFF images to PNG in their digital preservation software: > > > http://www.naa.gov.au/records-management/secure-and-store/e-preservation/at-NAA/software.aspx > > I don't think you need to convert your TIFF files to PNG, nor need you > start using PNG if you already use TIFF. But if you were creating your > archives from scratch starting today, I think you would choose PNG as > your format. Perhaps you could progressively convert TIFFs to PNGs > during the natural cycle of re-archiving. > > Hope this has been informative, > James > > > -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- > Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> > Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> > Unsubscribe - <mailto:[email protected]> > > -- J Philippe Chaperon Perth, Australie Occidentale -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> Unsubscribe - <mailto:[email protected]>
