Scanning color slides with Epson 4180. To save the image for editing
later is there any advantage between saving the file as TIF or BMP?
TIFF stores a bunch of information that might be useful (resolution in
DPI, software used, compression method used, bits/sample, etcetera) in
TIFF tags. Lots of image-editing software knows about these tags and
can take appropriate action. TIFFs can use a variety of compression
methods (G4 for black-and-white data, PackBits/LZW/RLE/JPEG for color or
grayscale data) as well. You can store multiple images in one TIFF
file, too.
BMP doesn't store additional info and can only use RLE compression
AFAIK. RLE is not very good at compression; G4 is best if your data is
black-and-white, LZW is best if your data is gray/color and you need
losslessness, and JPEG is best if you don't mind lossy compression.
(Note that JPEG-compressed TIFFs can cause older software to puke. Use
straight JPEGs if you go for lossy compression; they're more portable.)
BMP is very well-understood but it's not an open standard in the way
TIFF is. HTH,
