The winner, hands down: TIFF

TIF or TIFF is widely considered the standard for digital photo archiving. TIFF stands for Tagged Image File Format and it is universally accepted on all popular platforms like PC, Macintosh, Unix along with most major image editing applications. TIFF is pretty much hands down the best solution for archival purposes at this point and I can't say enough about it. TIFF files use LZW "lossless" compression (Lempel-Ziv-Welch - Named for the inventor) which means that the original information in the photograph is saved exactly as it was taken even though the image is being compressed. LZW Compression in TIFF files is more effective in continuous tone images than photographic images, and also more effective when dealing with black and white images than full color images.

There are only a few minor drawbacks to using TIFF files and they are unavoidable. First off, some free or lower cost image editing programs will not support TIFF due to the fact that LZW compression requires a royalty to be paid to the patent holder. So some companies don't support TIFF for this reason alone. Most popular and widely used professional programs like Adobe Photoshop (www.adobe.com) support TIFF and it should not deter you from using the format unless you can't find an affordable solution for image editing. If you are at all concerned about editing and archiving your images make the investment and purchase a quality program like Photoshop or something similar.

The second issue to keep in mind is the fact that TIFF files are rather large. This is really a curse and a blessing because with large file size comes high quality, detailed information that builds beautiful photos. The downside is that TIFF files can tax your storage solutions. A TIFF file is sometimes 20 times larger than a JPEG file and can eat up gigs and gigs of storage space quickly. The good news is that storage is generally affordable and getting cheaper every day. A few years ago you might pay $200 for a gig of storage space. I remember my first computer had a grand total of 250 megs on it! Today for less than $250 you can get 60-100 gig Firewire hard drives that make temporarilly storing your images affordable and fast.