PC TIFF vs MAC TIFF

[Dave]

I work on MacBook Pro and jump back and forth between XP and Leopard. I
have CS loaded on BOTH sides. When I save a TIFF file CD gives me the
option of saving it with the IBM PC Byte order OR Macintosh Byte order.
I'm so confused?!?!
Which way should I save it and why?

Dave

[Grinder]

For your scenario, it doesn't much matter. If you send file to someone
that can only read one style, you might consider matching their
preferences, but I don't know of any software that can only read one
over the other.

Aside from that, I suppose there would be a small (probably
insignificant) performance hit for having to flip byte orders. Classic
Mac's have a different ordering than PCs and Intel-based Macs. So, if
you're not using one of those older Macs, just stick with the PC byte order.

[Dave]

Thank you Grinder, for clearing that up. I'll stick with the PC that's
were most people are.
If you are interested here is a link to a photo I just captured about
an hour ago with a tiny Ricoh GX200 camera. I did not know what I took a
photo of until I uploaded onto my computer :-)
I love this little camera:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3207/2744414717_9f6ecc8990_b.jpg

Dave

[tacit]

In article <Zd2dna1Lm_9K6AHV...@comcast.com>,
Dave <de...@comcast.net> wrote:

The short answer: It doesn't matter.

The long answer: "Mac byte order" is actually "all non-Intel-processor
byte order." For various arcane technical reasons going all the way back
to the Intel 8008 and 8080 processors invented back in the early 1970s,
Intel processors have long worked with data in "little-endian" format,
meaning that the "littlest" bytes come first in a word.

In non-technical jargon, think of it this way. Suppose you want to write
a number like 1000. If you put the little part first, instead of writing
1 0 0 0, you would write 0 0 1 0. You would take each two digit pair of
numbers and swap it with the two digits next to it.

So you would write the number 1,403 as 0314. You would write the number
18,549,023 as 54182390. (You'd take the 18 and the 54 and swap them,
then take the 90 and the 23 and swap them.)[1]

This is how Intel processors work with numbers[2].

When you save a TIFF file in PC byte order, you take the stream of
numbers and swap pairs before you record it to the disk. If you write it
in Mac byte order, you simply write the numbers to the disk without
swapping anything around.

Any program written in, oh, the last 15 years or so can read a TIFF
written either way. So the practical answer is, it doesn't matter which
you choose.

[1] Most technically, the Intel processors swap bytes, so you'd actually
translate decimal numbers into hexadecimal before doing this swap. But
that's not necessary to getting a basic understanding of what's going on.

[2] Modern Intel processors can be set to work with numbers in
little-endian or "normal" (big-endian) format. But Windows works in
little-endian format.

--
Photography, kink, polyamory, shareware, and more: all at
http://www.xeromag.com/franklin.html

[Grinder]

I can't tell you how grateful I am that the picture was not of your butt.