Well, John Inzer gave you a lot of sites for good information about this
subject. A very good idea to read to see how this works.
So I will take a different approach.
This used to be correct, in the days of poor resolution digital cameras and
scanners. Things have changed dramatically and unless you want to print very
large (by large I mean more than 12 x 18) from a pro shop there is
absolutely no advantage to save tif files over jpg.
The first point is, every time you "Save as" a jpg there is a little loss
and artifacts introduced, so if you edit a picture and you Save as many
time, there is some degradation with each Save as, but not with Save if you
use Save to save your changes as you are editing(even if you don't do
anything to the picture and you Save as just to change the name of the file,
it is the Save as that is the problem). So if you plan to edit the file many
times, keep it in tif until done and then save it as jpg. Since you can
always saved it back as tif for further editing, no problem.
The second point is, can you see the difference? Only you can tell, no
amount of info will convince you. So you do the experiment yourself. It has
been done many times. Here is how to do it.
Take one of your jpg file, right click on it and click on Copy. Hold the
Ctrl key down and press the letter V. This will make a new file in your
folder "Copy of filename.jpg (note there is no degradation when you do this,
since you don't open the file and Save as, you only copied it). Now.
1. Open this file in your photo editor and Save as. Give it the name Copy of
filename 1.jpg
2. Open Copy of filename 1.jpg, Save as and change 1 to 2.
3. Continue doing this until you Save as this file 15 times.
Then you can start opening them and look at them on your screen, when do you
begin to see degradation? Can't see it yet, keep going to 25.
But the real test is not seeing on your screen, you screen magnifies
everything and we don't trust you since you know the number you are looking
at.
Now, print number 1, 3, 9, 15 and 25. Print as large as your printer can
print.
Don't look at the print too closely, just place a little number in pencil on
the back of them. Then, give them to somebody and ask them to place them on
a table in a different order. Can you pick No.1? If you do, try again the
next day. Did you get it again? If you can pick No 1 consistently, then it
does make a difference. If not, no more to argue about.
Then you can ask your tif friends to pick the print they think is the best.
You may be surprised!
Give us the results a few weeks from now.
