SRS -

If you're printing on offset press, you require color separations, and for that one function you can't use Photoshop Elements, since it doesn't allow you to work in, and save, the individual color channels, or to work in CMYK color space as is often needed for offset press work. Other programs will also make it simpler to handle lpi settings and screenings. That's a rather unusual need though, for most of the people here. Even working in "wet lab" film, few people ever make color separation negatives, although it was commonly done in the pre-digital days by those who needed it - and had the extra filters and other equipment necessary.

If you require color separations, you require one of the $600+ programs like Photoshop, and any program I've heard of with that capability will likely include a full range of other imaging capabilities, so there's no need for anything else. For any use other than the separations, Elements includes a very rich set of professional grade tools - if you get past the presets and find how to use them "professionally." The "high resolution and high density" is NOT a problem for Elements.

I'm not as impressed as many with the value of .tif as an "archive" format. The TIFF specification - last time I looked - defines more than a dozen different "flavors," about a half dozen of which are commonly used. Although they're all called .tif, many imaging programs add their own "proprietary tricks," or use uncommon variants, so that other programs often have "difficulties" with the files. "... does not recognize the format used by this file" is far too common when you try to pass .tif files between programs. In principle, it's a portable format - it just doesn't work that way in all cases.

All of the .tif flavors are supposed to be "lossless" if you open, edit, and resave in the "same flavor" format, but several of them do discard some of the pixel information, sometimes quite a lot of the pixel information, in the original conversion from bitmap to tif. Your program may also open the .tif produced elsewhere but save it in its own .tif version, and the conversion can result in some image loss. The LZW compression used is lossless, but the conversion to what gets compressed is not necessarily 100 percent.

The .gif format should never be considered for archiving continuous tone images like photographs. The file records 7 (or is it 8?) separate "color channels." You get to choose which colors, although most programs use their own default set. The standard allows inclusion of a definition of which colors are used, but this information is commonly omitted from the file. The result is that the image is rendered using any of the several "default color spaces" when you view or print, and results are notoriously variable. Brightness and contrast ranges are also highly compressed, with "unnecessary information" simply discarded in the conversion. The compression again is lossless, but the original conversion to .gif throws away a very large amount of the image information. The .gif format is okay (sort of) for line art, and sometimes for scans of printed images in which a crude color separation has already been made, but it is intended for use only where an absolute minimum file size is necessary, and where only a crude image is needed.

Since ANY conversion from one format to another is likely to include some loss of image information, you should normally save an "original" in the format that comes out of whatever device produced the image. For most digital cameras this means .jpg. If you're really interested in keeping all the information you start with, you should NEVER OPEN the original file in ANY program. Make a copy, and work from the copy. For archiving, the only format that reliably records all the pixels, unchanged, and should be openable in any forseeable program, is bitmap. The sheer size, and storage space requirements, may make saving everything as .bmp impractical, so some judgment is required. Note that you may even lose some information in the conversion from an original .jpg to .bmp, so it's well to keep whatever comes out of the machine.

Some high-end cameras allow you to save, in the camera, in "raw bitmap," but most cheaper ones convert the image directly to .jpg before saving. (One of the reasons for the notorious "shutter lag" and poor "cycle time" in digitals.) You may be able to choose, even with cheap cameras, to save as "high resolution" images; but you'll usually still get a .jpg, just with less compression.

A .jpg image does not have to be compressed, and any good editing program should allow you to choose how much compression to apply. Note that an uncompressed .jpg will typically have a file size about 10 percent larger than a bitmap from which you make it, and very few programs allow saving with no compression. If your program doesn't allow you to "Save As .jpg" and choose to get a file size that's at least 80% the size of the matching .bmp, you should get a different program - if you're really concerned about image quality and intend to do much editing in .jpg format (on the copies of your original images).

If you can work with "minimally compressed" .jpg files, for reasonable amounts of editing you may get better results editing directly "in .jpg" than converting to your program's native format and then back to .jpg, if your program allows that. The conversions may cause more loss than the recompression. This is strictly a judgment call, and requires some experience with your own program(s).

John