2009.12.12 18:27 "Re: [Tiff] YCbCr", by Antonio Scuri

So, you can store either RGB, YCbCr, or CMYK data in TIFF files. However, due to the variable conversion algorithms used for converting to/from CMYK or YCbCr, anything other than RGB is probably not likely to work outside of whatever application creates them. Is that a correct statement?

No, I said only for CMYK. YCbCr has a very precise conversion for RGB.

Also, if a user employs the automatic conversion process to get from YCbCr to RGB, doesn't the wide variety of possible conversion matrices for this process make the automatic conversion somewhat inconsistent or even incorrect in some cases? Does LibTiff implement the most common conversion matrix (if that's even clearly defined) for this automatic process, or is there some guess at a conversion matrix based on the data itself?

Both no, for the same reason.

It just seems to me that storing image data in anything other than RGB- based formats is not a good idea for most general usages and should only be employed if the images are used for internal program processing only. Otherwise, the matrix employed to generate the YCbCr or CMYK format is not known to a reader of the file.

As Toby explained, CMYK is used for publishing workflows. And the conversion is complicated. No it is not commonly used.

On the other hand YCbCr is widely used. Mostly because you can separate luminance and chrominance information, and compress them with different approaches. Almost all JPEG files are stored in this way (I mean *.jpg).

So actually it depends on what your application does. Also depends on what file format/compression you choose.

Best,

Scuri