When To Use Each File Format

Now that you have finished creating your design, you are read to save. Like a kid in a candy store, you are presented with many different options on how to save your file. Just as different software is good at performing different tasks, the same principle goes for file formats. 

You wouldn’t use Microsoft Word to create a large table of financial data; MS Excel would be a better option. Some file types are a suited for lower-resolution web graphics and email and others are high-resolution graphics for printing.

Why should you care?

Your artwork maybe rejected by a printer, resulting in slower download times that increase the bounce rate on your site, or be printed with unpredictable or awful results. These challenges will eventually cost you more time and money.

What Are The Different File Types?

.jpg
This file format is great for web sites and emails. This file format compresses continuous-tone images, a picture with millions of colors, down to a size that can be downloaded on the Internet quickly. This is not a lossless compression. This refers to lossy which means “ with losses” to image quality. If you compress the image too much, you will lose visual quality and the image will appear to look jagged.

.gif
Gifs are also a great alternative to use on the Internet and emailing. Pronounced Gif not Jif (like the peanut butter brand that was recalled in 2009) compresses images making them suitable for fast download. Unlike .jpg images, .gif are not suited for non-continuous color images, but only solid colored images. Cartoons or clip art are good examples of .gif. Gif will appear on a web page with a clear background allowing the user to layer them on a web page. Sometimes the artwork will have a sharp boarder around the image making the background visible. In that case save the file as a .png.

.png
This file format is a hybrid between the .jpg and .gif that allows users to compress non/continuous-tone color images and place on a web page with a clear background. .Png files are usually larger than the previous file formats but allow the user to layer images with a transparent background without a disruptive boarder.

.eps “encapsulated postScript”
EPS is a vector format designer for printing to PostScript printers. Many printers will ask that the artwork be saves as an .eps file or perhaps a .tif. It is considered the best choice of graphics format for high resolution printing of illustrations. Vector graphics are scalable images that can be resized without loss of quality.

.tif  “tagged image file format”
TIFF is an industry standard designed for handling raster or bitmapped images.
.Tif files can be saved in a variety of color formats and in various forms of compression. This format was originally intended for scanning and a lot of scanned images are saved as .tiff. Professional photographers often use this format.

.pdf  “portable document format”
In 1991, the Adobe Systems co-founder John Warnock created a system called, “Camelot” that evolved into the PDF. This file format encapsulated a fixed-layout flat document that includes the text, fonts, graphics and other information that needs to be displayed. Most computers have a program called Adobe Acrobat that can read this native Adobe file. If not, you can download Acrobat for free.

Saved As

Saving a file can be confusing for a non-expert. It is very frustrating to spend hours working on a file and not knowing that you have it in the wrong format. The good news is that an experienced designer will know from experience exactly which file type to use for each circumstance. We too have been in your shoes and know the pains of saving a file. Now, you have been equipped with the tools to properly save your file and hopefully this will eliminate the headache that usually coincides with this process.