Archival Photo Storage: TIFF vs JPEG vs PNG for Restoration

Once you've restored a precious family photograph, storing it in the right file format ensures the restoration quality is preserved for the long term. The choice between TIFF, JPEG, and PNG has real consequences for image quality, file size, and long-term archival stability. Here's what each format offers and when to use each.

TIFF: The Archival Standard

TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) is the professional archival standard for photographic storage. TIFF files can store images without any compression (lossless), preserving every pixel of information exactly as captured. TIFF supports high bit depth (16-bit per channel), which is important for photos requiring color correction or editing — 16-bit images have far more tonal information than 8-bit, reducing the banding and posterization that can result from aggressive color work. The main disadvantage of TIFF is file size: a full-resolution restored 35mm photo at 600 DPI saved as TIFF is typically 30–80 MB, which adds up quickly in a large collection.

JPEG: Practical Convenience with Trade-offs

JPEG compression reduces file sizes dramatically (a TIFF that's 50 MB might be 3–5 MB as maximum-quality JPEG) but achieves this through lossy compression that permanently discards some image data. At JPEG quality 95–100, the discarded data is typically not visually perceptible in normal viewing. The problem comes with repeated editing and re-saving: each time you open a JPEG, edit it, and re-save as JPEG, another round of compression is applied, and quality degrades cumulatively. For archival masters (the definitive saved copy), always use TIFF. JPEG is appropriate for sharing copies, web display, and printing.

PNG: The Middle Ground

PNG (Portable Network Graphics) offers lossless compression — like TIFF, it preserves all image data, but uses compression to reduce file sizes by 20–50% compared to uncompressed TIFF. PNG is a good archival format choice for photos that you'll be sharing or posting online, because it maintains full quality at smaller file sizes than TIFF while avoiding JPEG's lossy compression. The main limitation is that PNG doesn't support 16-bit-per-channel color in most common implementations, making it slightly less capable than TIFF for color-critical archival work. Recommendation: archive masters as TIFF, working and sharing copies as maximum-quality JPEG or PNG.

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Gather your old photographs, scan them at the highest resolution your equipment allows, and visit PhotoFix to see what AI restoration can recover. The process takes minutes, requires no technical skill, and the results often exceed what families dare to hope for.

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