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Knowing Your Tif From Your Eps...

Posted in the Dispatch on Sep 7, 2010 under Handbook

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Knowing Your Tif From Your Eps... | Sep 7, 2010
 Typically there are only five formats that you really need to worry about as a client. Each has a specific purpose and a specific...

 Typically there are only five formats that you really need to worry about as a client. Each has a specific purpose and a specific benefit. They are not always interchangeable. They are: eps, tif, gif, jpeg and gif.

Encapsulated PostScript (.eps)
The wonder file. This format is useful for both vector and bitmap graphics. Eps files contain a PostScript description of the data that makes up the graphic. Eps files can be employed for vector graphics, bitmap graphics, type or entire pages of a document. This format is for printing.

Tagged-Image File Format (.tif)
This is a bitmap format that is supported by nearly every graphics application around. This is what you want for print executions.

Graphic Interchange Format (.gif)
This format uses a fixed colour palette (just 256 colours) and heavy compression for smaller files and faster downloads. BUT, you will see degradation of photographs so best to use with images with areas of solid colours or solid logos. Also very useful format for creating animations with very little filespace. Animated gifs are little slide shows that play two or more gifs in sequence. These can repeat and can also have “transition slides” between gifs. This is a web only format and not recommended for print.

Joint Photographic Experts Group (.jpg)
Everyone knows what a jpeg is but many are unaware that the data removed in compression is lost permanently. JPG uses Discrete Cosine Transformation to compress an image, replacing groups of pixels with patterns. This format is used for continuous tone photographic images. The JPEG format can take advantage of the full spectrum of colours available to your monitor. JPEGs use compression for smaller files and faster downloads BUT unlike GIF files, the JPEG compression is “lossy” which means it turfs data in the process. When you pull a jpeg off your camera, save a master if you decide to edit it. Use for web or convert to .tif to use for print. 

Portable Network Graphics (.png) 
This is a bitmapped image format that delivers lossless data compression. PNG was created to improve upon and replace GIF  as an image-file format not requiring a patent license. Yay! PNG supports palette-based  greyscale, RGB and RGBA images. PNG was designed for transferring images on the web, not for print graphics, so no dice for CMYK.