TIFF or JPEG for scanned old photos: which should you keep?
The honest answer is both, for different reasons. What generation loss actually does to a JPEG over years of reopening and resaving it, the master and copy habit that avoids the problem entirely, and what the choice really costs in storage for a full collection.
Scanner software asks the question early and most people guess: TIFF or JPEG. The honest answer is both, because they are not competing for the same job. One is the file you never touch again. The other is the file you actually use.
The short answer
Save the master scan as TIFF. It is the uncompressed, unedited record of exactly what the scanner captured, and it is the file you go back to when a better restoration tool exists in five years or when this year’s edit turns out to be a mistake. Export JPEG copies from that master whenever you actually need a file: to share, to print, to upload somewhere. The JPEG is disposable in the useful sense. If it is ever damaged or you change your mind about an edit, you make another one from the TIFF in seconds.
What generation loss actually does
JPEG compression works by throwing away picture information that the human eye is unlikely to notice, which is exactly what makes the file small. Do it once, straight off a good scan, and the loss is real but minor. The trouble starts when the same file gets reopened, edited and saved again, because the compression runs again on top of whatever was already discarded, and it keeps compounding on every save after that.
A photo you scan today might get opened next year to try a new restoration tool, again in five years when a better one exists, and again whenever the software you use gets replaced. An archival file has a long working life ahead of it, not a single afternoon. A TIFF tolerates that life because nothing is thrown away in the first place. A JPEG used as a master quietly gets worse with every legitimate, well-intentioned edit, and by the time anyone notices, the detail lost in year one is not coming back.
This is also why a JPEG that has never been resaved, the file straight off your scanner, is in better shape than people assume. The damage is cumulative, not immediate. One compression pass is a small, one-time cost. Years of reopening and resaving is the actual problem.
The master and copy pattern
The habit that avoids all of this is simple to state and easy to keep once it is set up.
Scan once, save as TIFF, and never open that file to edit it. Not to crop, not to straighten, not to restore. It exists purely as the record.
Duplicate it before doing anything. The moment you want to restore, colour correct or crop a photograph, make a copy first and work on the copy. The master stays exactly as the scanner produced it, forever.
Export finished work as JPEG. Once a restoration or edit is done, save the result as a high-quality JPEG for whatever you actually need it for. That file can be resaved, shrunk, shared and reshared without any cost to the one file that matters.
Name them so the relationship is obvious. Something as simple as a masters folder that
nothing but a backup tool ever touches, and a working folder for everything else, does most
of the job. Our guide on organising a scanned photo
collection covers the folder structure and the
backup habit that keeps both copies safe once you have them.
The pattern costs one extra click per photograph, duplicating the file before you edit it, in exchange for never losing the original to an accumulation of small, well-meant changes.
What it actually costs in storage
The usual objection to TIFF masters is file size, and it is worth putting a real number on it rather than guessing. A TIFF stores three bytes of colour information for every pixel with nothing compressed out, so the file weighs roughly what the scan actually contains. A JPEG export of the same scan, saved at high quality, typically runs at about a tenth of that size.
Our scan output calculator works this out exactly for whatever print size and DPI you are scanning at, rather than a rule of thumb. Pick a 6 x 4 snapshot at 600 DPI and it will show you the TIFF weight and the JPEG weight side by side, along with the pixel dimensions those numbers come from. Multiply either figure by the size of your collection and you get a real storage budget instead of an estimate: a thousand snapshots scanned at a sensible setting, described in our DPI guide, comes to a meaningful pile of gigabytes as TIFF masters and a fraction of that as JPEG copies. A modern external drive holds either figure without strain. Storage has gotten cheap fast enough that this decision rarely comes down to whether you can afford the space.
Setting this up without overcomplicating it
None of this needs specialist software. Most scanning software offers TIFF as a save option directly, and any image viewer or editor can export a JPEG copy from it in a couple of clicks. The discipline that matters is not touching the TIFF once it exists, not the tool you use to create it.
If a photograph needs repair, damage like scratches, fading or a stain, do that work on a JPEG or PNG copy exported from the master, never on the TIFF itself. That way a restoration attempt that turns out disappointing costs you nothing but a few minutes, and the original scan is still sitting there, exactly as captured, ready to try again.
The file format decision only has to be made once, at scan time. Get it right there and every choice after it, editing, restoring, sharing, printing, becomes a decision about a copy rather than a risk to the one file you cannot rescan from a print that may no longer exist.
Common questions
- Should I scan old photos as TIFF or JPEG?
- Both, doing different jobs. Scan and save the master as TIFF, because it is what the scanner actually captured with nothing thrown away. Export JPEG copies from that master for sharing, printing or uploading anywhere. The TIFF never gets edited or resaved. The JPEGs are disposable and easy to remake.
- What is generation loss in a JPEG file?
- Every time a JPEG is opened, edited and saved again, the compression discards a little more picture information to keep the file small. One save is not noticeable. A master file that gets reopened and resaved across years of software changes and edits accumulates loss each time, and none of it can be undone.
- How much bigger is a TIFF than a JPEG, really?
- Roughly ten times, for a comparable quality setting. A 600 DPI scan of an 8 x 10 photograph runs to hundreds of megabytes as a TIFF and tens of megabytes as a JPEG. Storage is cheap enough now that the difference rarely changes what is practical, only what you choose for a master against a copy.
- I already scanned everything as JPEG. Is it too late?
- The scan itself is not ruined, a JPEG straight off the scanner has only been compressed once and holds most of its detail. What matters going forward is not resaving that file repeatedly. Treat it as the master now, keep a copy of it untouched, and do any editing on a duplicate.
