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I'm scanning in my old paper photos from the 80s and 90s.

From this answer I know I should use 600dpi. But the scanning office is also asking me if I want JPEG of TIFF. I know JPEG is lossy, so I should not use that for archival purposes.

So let's see if TIFF is an appropriate file format to scan my old photos in.

  • I read TIFF may be lossy, so how do I instruct the scanning office to make sure they're not using the lossy format?
  • Does the bit-depth per color in TIFF provide more color details than JPG (at its lowest compression mode?
  • Is Google Photo's able te recognize en present TIFF's?
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Chris
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  • You should ask your scanning office what scanner they intend to use. In case they propose a pull-through (ADF) scanner, this will make the job simpler and faster for them. But such scanners are usually built for document scanning and include usually by default special filters to improve a document image for optical character recognition. Such filters will alter the appearance of your scanned photos (e.g. increase contrast which means removing detail from dark or bright parts of pictures). – user291737 Mar 28 '15 at 11:09
  • A simple way to find out whether a scanner was built for photo scans is to ask whether they can scan at 1200 or 2400 dpi. If they can only scan up to 600 dpi, it will be a document scanner for sure. – user291737 Mar 28 '15 at 11:09

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I would suggest that amongst the factors to consider is your available storage space & also eventual goal.

TIFF can be huge, but they are the most 'accurate'

One you didn't mention, but that I would consider long before JPG is PNG
PNG is a compressed format, so is smaller than TIFF, & is theoretically lossless, so you shouldn't lose any of the image quality.

JPG is compressed but also lossy, so you are discarding part of the image detail every time you save.

This is a good user-level explanation as to which to go for - PNG or TIFF – Do You Know Which Format Won’t Hurt Your Scanned Photos?

Tetsujin
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