I have 2 same size, dimensions, and resolution images in TIFF (6400x6400 pixels, 800x800 ppi). The files are 18.7MB and 27.0MB, they were created with R's tiff() with compression="lzw".
When I try to create a tile using
montage -compress lzw -tile 2x1 -geometry +0+0 Figure4L.tiff Figure4R.tiff Figure4.tiff
I get a file 12800x6400 TIFF which has a size of 12.8 MB, GIMP reports a resolution of 72 x 72 ppi.
GIMP also reports "Warning:The image you are loading has 16 bits per channel. GIMP can only handle 8 bit, so it will be converted for you. Information will be lost because of this conversion." which was not present in the initial images
What and why is being lost with the montage? Is the montaging lossless? Apparently not. Is there a better way to achieve my purpose without losing quality?
UPDATE: This might be related to how R writes TIFFs so I updated the tags. It might be also related to TIFF plot generation and compression: R vs. GIMP vs. IrfanView vs. Photoshop file sizes
