Is there a way to get smaller TIFF files?

Question

I'm working with canon CR2 RAW files. My images usually have 30MB when I import into Lightroom, but when I bring into Photoshop for an adjustment and get back to Lightroom the TIFF file generated is huge. I'm shooting with a 750D, and I have a file with 28.3 MB, after generating the TIFF (single layer) the TIFF file has now 137MB. I usually put all of my Lightroom images and library in the cloud, but I think I'll run out of space pretty soon with files like this. Is there a way to get compressed or smaller TIFF files?

Answer 1

There are a few ways to minimize the file size when exporting from Lightroom to Photoshop. Click the Preferences option under the Lightroom pulldown menu with a Mac, or the Edit pulldown menu on a PC. In the External Editing tab, choosing PSD instead of TIFF will result in a smaller file. In the same menu, a much smaller file size can be generated by switching the Bit Depth option to 8-Bit rather than 16-Bit. If you prefer working with TIFFs, lossless compression can be applied when saving images with either ZIP or LZW image compression. Another option to consider is to save the final file in DNG (Adobe Digital Negative) format, which, in most cases, will reduce the file size considerably.