Newbie questions re: tiff, giff, Jpeg??

[matttaylor]

I've just started fooling around with scanning drawings on to the computer and I'm not really sure of the difference between Giff, Tiff, Jpeg and all the others.

What's the difference, how to use them and under what situations?

In order to manipulate/create drawings is there a better format to save as??

It'd be wicked if someone could fill me in or point to a tutorial.

Thanx tons for any help.

[Calle_]

.Gif and .Jpg are alot more compressed, optimised for websites, but the quality is not really super. .Tif is bigger and better =) if you are going to post images on such as this forum i recomend .Jpg and if you just scan them to color them you should go .tif and then .jpg to uppload the colored one. Also save them as .Rif(painter) or .pdf(photoshop) to save it with all the layers if u wanna change it.

[Jin]

Hi,

TIFF

As mentioned in the previous message, TIFF is a good format, larger file, for keeping your image's color information intact.

GIF

GIF files are smaller, often used for Web graphics, and especially used for graphics that need a transparent background (transparent GIF). They are usually best for image with flat areas of color, not so good for paintings, for instance.

JPG

JPG files "lossy". In other words, when they're saved the first time, the image is (again, as mentioned above), compressed and some color information is lost though it may not be noticeable if the quality setting is high enough. When a JPG file is saved a second time, it's compressed further, again losing color information and the more times it's saved, the more noticeable the loss of quality.

After your original image is saved in the software's native format (i.e. Painter RIFF or Photoshop PSD to ensure all software specific information is kept intact), its dimensions can be reduced if needed so the image can be displayed without the viewer needing to use scroll bars, and to reduce the file size for faster loading. The Resolution (PPI, or number of pixels per inch) can also be reduced to 72 ppi since that's about all that can be displayed on the screen anyway. Then the image can be saved again as a JPG, uploaded to your website, and displayed on your web page.

Again, if you ever need to save a JPG for this image again, open the original file and save it as a JPG. Don't resave the first JPG file as it will lose image quality each time it's saved again.

In Painter, you can save a JPG at Quality: High without noticeable loss of image quality. Quality: Excellent increases the file size considerably, and unnecessarily in most cases.

In Photoshop, use File > Save for Web and choose the appropriate qualtiy settings to get the best visual quality, file size, and loading time.


I don't always do this, but do know it's best to keep my web image file sizes somewhere between 40 kb and 100 kb to ensure reasonable loading time, especially for people who don't have fast internet connections (lots of us don't).


Hope this helped a little. :)