Some years back we digitised half of our photograph collections, using TIFF files to store high quality images and watermarked low quality JPEGs for standard copies and attaching to our on-line catalogue.

We are now starting to digitise the rest of our photograph collections, and are questioning whether we should use high quality JPEGs instead of TIFFs. I understand that TIFFs have more bit depth and can therefore hold more digital data, whereas JPEGs are inherently lossy due to being compressed. On the other hand, it appears there is not much visible difference between TIFF and high quality JPEG images. Of course, computer space is an important issue. 

Do any of you have experience of digitising image collections. If so, I would be grateful for any advice. My work email is [log in to unmask] if you want to contact me directly.

Many thanks

Paul Davidson

Assistant Archivist, 

Hillingdon Local Studies, Archives and Museum Service