Why is my focus-stacked TIFF so large after saving from Photoshop?
Asked 11/20/2021
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2 answers
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I stacked six focus-bracketed RAW files in Photoshop (sent from Lightroom as layers, then Auto-Align and Auto-Blend). Each original CR3 file was about 20MB, but when I saved the finished stack as a TIFF, the file was around 1GB. I had deselected the individual layers and only the stacked result was selected before saving. Is that file size normal, and how can I save a much smaller TIFF?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
4y ago
2 Answers
3
Did you save it with Layers?
Photoshop will save layers to tiff even if they are switched off in the app. You must either delete the layers if you never need them back [or are not going to save the entire PSD], or switch off Layers in the Save dialog.
Layers will be on by default if the Photoshop document contains multiple layers, or off [& greyed out] if it doesn't.
Originally by user57929. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user57929
4y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
Yes—if you saved the TIFF with layers, a very large file is normal. In Photoshop, simply deselecting or hiding layers does not remove them from the saved TIFF. If the document still contains all the source layers, Photoshop can embed them in the TIFF, which makes the file much larger.
To get a smaller TIFF, either:
- flatten the image before saving, or
- in the TIFF save dialog, turn off the option to save layers.
If the document has multiple layers, Photoshop usually enables layer saving by default. If there is only one flattened layer, that option will be unavailable or grayed out.
So the likely reason for your 1GB file is that the TIFF included all the stacked layers, not just the final visible result.
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