Saving Simplified Images in TIFF Format

Okay, so now let’s go through the steps for creating a simplified, flattened TIFF:

1. Open the image you have. 
2. Access Photoshop CS3’s Layers and Channels palettes (by choosing Window --> Layers or pressing F7). 
3. Click the Channels tab and drag it out of the group so you can see the Layers and Channels palettes simultaneously side by side. 
4. Now, you could manually flatten your image and remove alpha channels, but this takes way too long! Instead, check to make sure your image is just the way you want it, with the layers you want active visible, and those you don’t want active invisible. 
5. To save a simplified TIFF version of this image, choose File --> Save As. The Save As dialog box appears. 
6. Configure this Save As dialog box in the following manner: - From the dialog’s Format menu, select TIFF. - Deselect both the Layers and Alpha Channels check boxes. This will automatically select the As ACopy check box. This will force a copy to be made, leaving the original multilayered and multi-alpha channeled file intact. 



• Select the Embed Color Profile check box if you want to include your color profile for this image. Note: If you are saving a final CMYK file for commercial printing, many printing companies prefer that you do not save color profiles with your final print images. Ask your prepress manager’s preference. When in doubt, save the profile, because it can always be stripped out later. 
• Select the Image Previews you would like to include, typically the Icon, Mac, and Windows check boxes. This will provide you with cross-platform preview visibility of your image. 
• Choose the location where you want your image saved. If you are saving a final CMYK image to place in a document, I suggest placing this image in the same folder as the page layout document in which you intend to place this image. This will facilitate relinking of this image each time you open the document after you place the image. 



7. Click Save. The TIFF Options dialog box appears. Configure this dialog as follows: 



• Select the None radio button in the Image Compression section. This will prevent any compression from being applied to your image. Selecting either the LZW or ZIP options will apply lossless compression to your images. This will not result in any data loss (unlike applying JPEG type of lossy compression). And while most modern RIPs can handle LZW compression just fine, using LZW compression may make the image more difficult to process/RIP during printing, so I do not recommend applying any compression—simple is better. Ask your printing company for clarification if you would like to save some file space by using LZW compression!
• Leave the Pixel Order set on the default Interleaved (RGBRGB) setting.
• In the Byte Order section, click the IBM PC radio button. This will create a cross-platform compatible version of your TIFF. Macs can read either byte order; Windows computers prefer the IBM PC byte order. All this affects is the order in which the image data is written to the disk.

This will save a simplified cross-platform compatible copy of this image in TIFF format in which all the layers are flattened and all the alpha channels are removed. If you compare the file sizes of your starting PSD file with your simplified TIFF, you will see quite a difference. You can check the Document Sizes numbers located at the lower-left corner of your PSD file.