James Stephens

This post talks about some differences between these two formats so that you may better choose which one to use.

Photoshop (Psd) Format

pros

• Both Lossless And Compressed.
• Supports Layers.
• 4Gb limit on file size.

cons

• A number of programs won’t read psd.

Tiff Format

pros

• Lossless.
• Supports Layers (from v6 onwards).
• Open standard - universally supported in native format.
• 4GB limt on file size.

cons

• Native Tiff files can be quite a bit larger than Psd.
• Compressed Tiff LZW files are similar in size to Psd files but not universally accepted.

There used to be a patent on the LZW compression algorithm but it expired in 2004 so there’s not royalty charge to use it. Nevertheless, two applications I use regularly still don’t accept Tiff LZW (or Psd for that matter). For these applications I use Tiff and for others I use Psd as the file size is so much smaller than Tiff. If I find I need a Psd file in Tiff format it is a simple matter to convert from Psd to Tiff in Image Processor called from Bridge in Adobe Photoshop.