Digital printing

What should I do after taking a digital picture to get the best

image quality I can? Such as, is TIFF best format to take it in or

is JPEG so close it doesn't matter? Also now once I sharpen or

whatever, should I save again in JPEG or better off in TIFF or PSD?

Then to print to a home printer, now change DPI or just print as is

or what? I do not know best path to follow from shutter to print or

to save on CD to have lab print it. Thank you all in advance.

If you're taking pictures for fun JPG is fine, if you make any modifications to the image such as sharpen or color curves, save the JPG to TIF so you wont recompress the image. No need to change any DPI settings at all, dependending on the print size you will get different DPI automatically. If you have a good photo printer suck as the 6/7 color Epson or canon using good quality paper you can obtain good results at home.

Your best options are: RAW mode if your camera supports it. If so, convert to TIFF format after doing whatever PS changes you need to do. Saving file as TIFF saves all of the information intact, whereas saving files as JPEG loses information - how much loss depends on the amount of compression used to save the JPEG file. Keep the original RAW file as your master

 

The next best option is to shoot in TIFF mode. It's not as good as RAW mode, but compared to JPEG the file does not lose any information when saved or resaved, whereas JPEG files loses image information every time the same file is saved again as the same file because of the type compression routine used .

If you are begining with a JPEG file from the camera, best is to save it on a disk as a master file. Any changes you make should be saved as another file in TIFF mode so as not to lose any more information after doing the PS stuff to it, or simply don't save the file and aply the PS corrections to it every time prior to printing.

The quality of the file depends on the JPEG compression used - low compression = low information loss and large file size; high compression = more information loss and small file size.