Graphic File formats

Notes: Understanding File formats

• Compression: smaller file format, not as good quality as original (looks worse, sounds worse) 
• File Formats:
• All computer documents are packaged in different formats.
• The format is determined often by file origin such as photoshop
• Graphic file can be reduced in file size by using compression formats.
• Lossy vs Lossless:
• Graphic image formats fall under 2 categories of compression, lossy and losses
• Lossy: Image data is lost or reduced for smaller file sizes but can cause poor image quality (MP4 or GIF or JPG)
• Lossless: retains image data for higher quality but larger files sizes. (TIF)
• Graphic Formats
• TIF,JPG and GIF are the 3 most common formats for common activities such as printing, scanning and displaying over the internet
• PNG is a common web format, is high quality and can contain and alpha (transparency) channel
• Each format has its own advantages.
• File Format: TIF
• STand for Tagged Image Format
• Common format for desktop publishing, print photo, graphic design
• Is a LOSSLESS file format, retains image data for maximum image quality
• Can result in larger files
• JPG
• Stands for Joint Photographer Joint expert group
• Lossy format
• can reduce an image file size by 10:1 without noticeable loss
• level of compression adjustable.
• GIF
• Stands for graphic interchange format 
• Is best for graphics or images that have flat color or even tone, such as cartoon
• Reduces image size by "indexing"color for 3 channels to 1
• is adjustable by changing color but levels from 1 to 8
• Contains no DPI (dots per inch) data for printing. Not a proper format for print
• Know Your pixels
• Tif and JPG are best for images with pixels that blend in color these are called "contiguous pixels"
• GIF is best for images with flat even tone, or "non-contiguous pixels"
• Ani-Aliased blends pixels
• Aliased is jagged. Good for pixel artists.