--- "Daniel M. German" <dmg@...> wrote:
> Have you ever had a TIFF but not know how it was
> created?
Your question above can be turned around a number of
times: Have you ever had a XXX but not know how it was
created? - replace XXX with JPG, GIF, PNG, RAW, BMP,
... you name it.
Unless you can store consistently the information you
are suggesting to store in the TIFF across all image
formats, I urge you to look for a different place to
store that information and the relationship between
the lost image and its meta data.
To give you the more specific example of my own
workflow, the answer is *no*. TIFFs are only temporary
work files in my workflow.
I shoot RAW most of the time. I transform the RAWs
into TIFFs for processing. I archive the RAWs and the
conversion settings. I dump the input TIFFs after
processing as they are much heavier than the
RAWs+conversion settings which can reconstruct the
TIFFs in no time.
Depending on the complexity of the project, I might
add alpha transparency to the input TIFFs. I store
the mask only, with a file name that clearly
references the original RAW file name. I store the
mask as PSD.
Then I set up the stitching project, which is also
archived, as PTS/textfile. I stitch the input TIFFs
into output TIFFs which I load into my image editing
application (currently Photoshop, and no intention to
switch, even though I checked that the Gimp in Ubuntu
can open and work with all of my files).
I do my editing on layers, making sure I can always go
back on each individual manipulation. I save the
resulting layered equirect as PSD, with a file name
consistent with the PTS filename.
Depending on the complexity of work at nadir and
zenith, I often also store separately the extracted
nadir/zenith view with the work done on it before
reinsertion - also all in PSD.
When I am happy with the result, I archive all of the
above project files in an appropriately named
directory that also contains information such as audio
recordings, positioning, etc. - each in appropriately
named and structured files.
I generate one last TIFF - a flattened equirect that
goes into the script that produces for me all the
different visualization formats and resolutions -
mostly as JPGs. I used to delete that TIFF after
production of the visualization formats, but I have
now moved to have them on a staging server so that
when I want to introduce a new visualization format I
only have to run a script through the storage on the
staging server. I came across this problem when Thomas
introduced Flash output to pano2qtvr. Adding support
for Flash to the front end of my VoxCasa service was
an easy two hours of work. But I can not switch it on
until I have Flash for all panos published up there,
so I scrambled (and am still scrambling) at getting
the original equirects again from the photographers.
To summarize, your above question is a management
problem, not an editing problem. Since TIFF is editing
only for me, I don't have this problem. Also very
often, throwing technical solutions at management
problem results in damagement, for it does not cure
the problem at its root: the damager. Every
photographer should have a proper filing/archiving
system and while I do welcome technical solutions to
manage an archiving system, I do not think that they
should be mixed up with a specific image format.
My two cents.
Yuv
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