Image file formats and compression

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Image File Formats and Compression

Obsolete

While the information contained here may have some value, note that it is obsolete. RawTherapee 5.4 uses an efficient and fast compression strategy for both TIFF and PNG, and both formats support metadata.

Intermediate format

An intermediate file is one you use just to pass the image data around between programs while working on it, e.g. from RawTherapee to GIMP or Photoshop.

The ideal intermediate format is one which loses no image data or metadata and is quick to read and write. This pretty much means you should always use uncompressed 16-bit TIFF as your intermediate format. Period.

Final format

Some things to consider when deciding which format to use for storing non-intermediate files, e.g. final processed images, scanned film, high dynamic range images, and so forth:

  • JPEG is the most widely supported but is lossy and in most implementations limited to 8 bits per channel, 24 bits per pixel.
  • TIFF and JPEG support metadata, PNG generally does not.
  • TIFF can use various compression methods (including the one PNG uses: DEFLATE, also known as Zip). Zip is the most efficient compression method for real-world photos supported by TIFF.
  • PNG is slow and inefficient.
  • The images can be converted externally to other more efficient formats, such as 16-bit JPEG-2000 or OpenEXR.

Lossless compression comparison

The input file is a 16-bit 10000x5000 pixel real-world panorama.

To convert the formats I used ImageMagick-6.8.8.10 on an x86_64 Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU Q 820 @ 1.73GHz, and I scripted the steps in Bash.


TIFF 16-bit

for c in RLE None LZW Zip; do time convert foo.tif[0] -monitor -depth 16 -compress "$c" "${c}_16.tif"; ls -lh "${c}_16.tif"; done
Format Compression Size [MB] Time [s]
TIFF 16-bit None 382 5
TIFF 16-bit RLE 385 5
TIFF 16-bit LZW 293 8
TIFF 16-bit Zip 243 61

Yes, the result using RLE was bigger than the uncompressed image.


TIFF 12-bit

for c in None LZW Zip; do time convert foo.tif[0] -monitor -depth 12 -compress "$c" "${c}_12.tif"; ls -lh "${c}_12.tif"; done
Format Compression Size [MB] Time [s]
TIFF 12-bit None 287 4
TIFF 12-bit LZW 248 9
TIFF 12-bit Zip 210 44

GIMP-2.9 and RawTherapee-4.2 do not read 12-bit TIFF files.


TIFF 8-bit

for c in None LZW Zip; do time convert foo.tif[0] -monitor -depth 8 -compress "$c" "${c}_8.tif"; ls -lh "${c}_8.tif"; done
Format Compression Size [MB] Time [s]
TIFF 8-bit None 191 3
TIFF 8-bit LZW 51 4
TIFF 8-bit Zip 49 41


TIFF 16-bit floating-point

for c in None LZW Zip; do time convert foo.tif[0] -monitor -define quantum:format=floating-point -compress "$c" "${c}_fp.tif"; ls -lh "${c}_fp.tif"; done
Format Compression Size [MB] Time [s]
TIFF 16-bit floating-point None 382 6
TIFF 16-bit floating-point LZW 153 8
TIFF 16-bit floating-point Zip 133 72


TIFF 64-bit double-precision floating-point

for c in None LZW Zip; do time convert foo.tif[0] -monitor -depth 64 -define quantum:format=floating-point -compress "$c" "${c}_64fp.tif"; ls -lh "${c}_64fp.tif"; done
Format Compression Size [MB] Time [s]
TIFF 64-bit floating-point double None 1525 21
TIFF 64-bit floating-point double LZW 1016 36
TIFF 64-bit floating-point double Zip 551 104


OpenEXR 16-bit floating-point

OpenEXR is a good option; it's modern, efficient and widely supported. 

for c in None Zip PIZ; do time convert foo.tif[0] -monitor -depth 16 -compress "$c" "${c}_16.exr"; ls -lh "${c}_16.exr"; done
Format Compression Size [MB] Time [s]
EXR 16-bit None 382 13
EXR 16-bit Zip 106 21
EXR 16-bit PIZ 111 7


To convert the EXR to a 16-bit TIFF you need to set the colorspace to sRGB (set it, not transform it): 

convert Zip_16.exr -depth 16 -set colorspace sRGB suchwow.tif


PNG 16-bit

Finally, PNG. ImageMagick lets you set the zlib compression level 1-9, or uses Huffman compression if you set the first value to 0. The second value sets date encoding filtering, where 5=Adaptive, best for real-world photos. 

for l in 0 6 9; do time foo.tif[0] -monitor -depth 16 -quality "${l}5" "${l}5_16.png"; ls -lh "${l}5_16.png"; done
Format Compression Size [MB] Time [s]
PNG 16-bit level 0 310 9
PNG 16-bit level 6 233 87
PNG 16-bit level 9 233 351

Notice the same file size of level 6 and 9 despite taking 4 times as long.


PNG 8-bit

for l in 0 6 9; do time foo.tif[0] -monitor -depth 8 -quality "${l}5" "${l}5_8.png"; ls -lh "${l}5_8.png"; done
Format Compression Size [MB] Time [s]
PNG 8-bit level 0 137 10
PNG 8-bit level 6 49 40
PNG 8-bit level 9 46 341
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