At 07:55 PM 2/27/99 -0500, Peggy Munroe wrote: >I use Adobe Photo Deluxe, which saves them in a PDD format. I often >convert to JPEG to save space. I have never known the difference in >the files except for space. Why is TIFF better? I can't explain the details in short terms, but basically it amounts to .jpg loses some of the pixels which make up the photo. You will not notice the difference until you start doing things like enlarging, printing, and other things. Actually, keeping them in .pdd (Adobe Photo Deluxe) or .psd (Photo Shop Deluxe) is the ideal answer, except that you should also go ahead and convert them into a shareable format for others. Both .jpg and .tif are pretty universal, but if you check with any of the commercial places that use digital images (my son worked for one until 2 weeks ago) they will tell you never to use .jpg for your long term retaining format. The .jpg format is used for internet and electronic transmission of images. It's smaller, and if it's a smaller format, what does that mean, except that something has to be missing from the other format. The important thing in easy words is that you lose some of the coloring and such with .jpg and you do not lose as much with .tif Although most of your major commercial printers, where a future descendant might take these digital copies to get prints made, will probably have the latest and greatest programs, the thing to remember that someone pointed out earlier, is 'change of formats over time'. Think about how often we see .pcx anymore (or maybe you never have because it's already before your time and less than 10 years old!) There are other formats that have dropped by the wayside, just as .jpg, .psd, .pdd, etc. will. So will the programs that read them currently. We all think of the computer as being a 'forever' thing since they tell us the 'CD-Rom lifetime will be good for xxx compared to the diskettes limited lifetime of xxx'. BUT, as genealogists, we know that we need to be thinking in terms of 'forever' or centuries; neither of which are available yet. Just as most computers today do not have 5-1/4 floppies on them, so the computers of 10 years from now may not have CD-Roms. So, the longest saving choice is actually taking new photos of the photos, the second choice is to scan them in (actually best is to do both if you can) and with scans, save them in the original format plus a universal format, such as .tif (then convert them to .jpg if you want to electonically send them. And if you thought this was a long answer, wait until someone tries to explain things in *real* detail. <smile> Hope I didn't make just more mud for anybody. And I can try to help more if you like. Sherry L. (Bouse) Nisly