Yeah, there are apps that don’t support LZW compression for TIFFS, but that is that apps problem not AE. Premiere’s lack of support for compressed TIFFs is major problem for 16-bit delivery of content in greater than 4K as file sizes for feature length projects get larger than currently available drives. I just had to deliver a 40 minute 8K x 8K to vendor that wanted DPX. 12 TB’s.  Premiere actually could not (not sure if this is fixed) do anything but 8-bit uncompressed. No 16-bit TIFFs at all.

 

And Photoshop has always supported LZW , ZIP an RLE compression. I get the best and most stable compression and best performance off LZW plus several apps I work with (PT GUI etc.) support it best as well. Resolve supports it great as well.

 

And I’ve never seen a problem with compressed files larger than originals – you need to back that one up with motion footage sequences. Uncompressed anything 6K and 8K frames are massive and would have broken workflows if LZW  compression does not work.

 

EXR is great if all your apps support but TIFF with LZW is much more widely supported. Which makes Premiere’s lack all the more embarrassing.

 

 

For 8 bits I use Tiff or 100% JPEG (depending on alpha) but be wary of using TIFFS with LZW for 16 bit.  AFAIK After Effects is the only application that allows LZW compression for 16 bit TIFFs, as it’s not a great algorithm for 16bit images and the compressed files are often larger than the originals.  So you have a case where it takes longer to render/read because of the compression/decompression process and the files can be larger than they were in the first place.  Photoshop and other apps disable LZW compression for 16bit TIFFS, but AE allows it.  YMMV.