TIFF vs JPG for Photography: Which Should You Use?

Professional photographers deal with this choice constantly: shoot in RAW, export to TIFF or JPG? Keep masters as TIFF or JPG? Send clients TIFF or JPG? Here's the practical answer based on actual use cases.

TIFF: The Professional Archive Format

TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) is the industry standard for professional photography archiving and print production. It supports multiple color spaces (sRGB, Adobe RGB, ProPhoto RGB), bit depths up to 32-bit per channel, and lossless compression. A professional DSLR photo exported as TIFF might be 50–120 MB.

TIFF preserves every detail from your RAW file. When you export from Lightroom or Capture One as TIFF, you're keeping a full-quality master that can be re-edited without quality loss.

JPG: The Sharing and Delivery Format

JPG is a lossy format — each save introduces slight compression. But at 90–95% quality, this loss is genuinely imperceptible. A 100 MB TIFF becomes a 3–8 MB JPG at 90% quality. That's a 95% size reduction with no visible difference on screen or in standard prints.

JPG is the format for delivering photos to clients, posting on social media, submitting to publications, and archiving when storage is a concern.

The Professional Workflow

Stage	Format	Reason
Camera capture	RAW	Maximum data, non-destructive
Editing master	TIFF	Lossless, re-editable
Client delivery	JPG 90-95%	Small, universal, excellent quality
Social media	JPG 80-85%	Fast upload, still looks great
Large format print	TIFF	Maximum detail for large prints
Web gallery	JPG 80%	Fast loading, good quality

When to Convert TIFF to JPG

• Sending photos to clients via email (TIFF too large)
• Uploading to social media, websites, or stock photo sites
• Sharing via cloud storage with storage limits
• When clients need photos on their phones
• Print orders at standard print labs (most accept JPG, not TIFF)

Converting TIFF to JPG

PNG To JPG handles TIFF files up to 100 MB. Set quality to 90–95% for client delivery, 80–85% for web and social. The real-time size estimate shows exactly how large your JPG will be before converting. Drop up to 50 TIFF files at once for batch delivery.