This topic comes up with my design clients almost daily. Especially my logo design and branding clients. Once we finalize a logo design I save and send the logo back to them in multiple formats. Why so many formats? Because each format serves a different purpose. Within each little 2 or 3 letter extension lies a key benefit to ensure your image shines bright whereever you choose to place it. Has your artist ever requested a "vector" file? I'm sure they have. You probably had a little freak out in your mind thinking to yourself "crap, what is a vector file and why do they need it?" And in a mad dash you just send every version of your logo you have in hopes that one of them is vector.... LOL Am I right? Read on my friend. I will explain the basic file formats and the specific purposes they serve! Let's start with the most important part (also the most confusing). Vector vs. Raster images. The easiest way to understand the difference between a vector image and a raster image is visually. If you need to make a visual reference think Raster = photographs, Vector = Illustrations Does that help? Ok, on to formats. We'll start with RASTER image formats... JPG The JPG file format, short for Joint Photographic Experts Group, is a type of image compression that works best with photographs and complex images. JPGs use a compression method that removes non-human-visibile colors from images to decrease file sizes. Be careful, though. If you decrease the quality of a JPG too much, you will begin to lose important color information that cannot be recovered. The JPG file format also allows you to save progressive JPGs, which will load in stages. You may have experienced this before when visiting a website and watching as an image slowly loses its blurriness and becomes clearer. Use JPGs for product photos, human portaits and other images where color variances are important. Do not use JPGs if you need transparency, which is the ability to see through an image and decipher the background behind it. JPGs do not support transparency. GIF A GIF, or a Graphics Interchange Format, reduces the number of colors in an image to 256, from potentially thousands of colors coming from a digital camera. GIFs also support transparency. GIFs have the unique ability to display a sequence of images, similar to videos, called an animated GIF, which is a series of separate GIF images that are linked together to automatically create motion, or animation. GIFs, like JPGs, also have the ability to load in segments on web pages. These images, known as interlaced GIFs, tend to be slightly larger than regular GIFs, but they allow a GIF image to be partially visible as it is loading on a web page. GIFs can be used effectively for limited-color images, such as logos and graphs, or for images where transparency is important. Do not use GIFs for full-color product photos and staff portraits, basically anything you want to print later on because GIF colors are limited to 256 so you will end up with a pixelated and grainy image if you end up printing it. If you're ever in doubt, save your image as a PNG instead of a GIF. Then you won't have any loss of quality or color. PNG PNGs, or Portable Network Graphics, were created as an alternative to the GIF file format. PNGs allow for 5 to 25 percent greater compression than GIFs, and with a wider range of colors. Like GIFs, PNG file formats also support transparency, but PNGs support variable transparency, where users can control the degree to which an image is transparent. The downside to advanced transparency in PNGs is that not all older browsers will display the transparency the same. PNG images are widely used in video creation because they don't lose any quality or color. Now let's talk about VECTOR image formats... EPS Adobe's EPS format (Encapsulated PostScript) is perhaps the most common vector image format. It is the standard interchange format in the print industry. It is widely supported as an export format, but due to the complexity of the full format specification, not all programs that claim to support EPS are able to import all variants of it. Adobe Illustrator and recent versions of CorelDRAW have very good support for reading and writing EPS. EPS can also be a raster image format but most commonly it's vector. AI The native format of Adobe Illustrator is the AI format (Adobe Illustrator Artwork), a modified version of the older EPS format. The AI format is fairly widely supported, but is less ubiquitous than the EPS format, and most programs that read AI can also read EPS. Adobe's PDF format (Portable Document Format) is very widely used as a general purpose platform-independent document format. And while it is not exclusively used as such, it is also a very good vector image format. Adobe gives away the Acrobat PDF reader, but sells the tools required to create PDF files (third party tools that perform the same task are also for sale). Those tools work with any program that is able to print. Support for reading and editing PDF files is much more limited. There you have it folks. I sure hope this helps eliviate any freak out sessions you may have in the future when your designer asks for a specific file format. Feel free to ask questions or share tips and tricks in the comments below!
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Erin GipfordI am destined to help people save time and work smarter by using the best design software on the market, Adobe Creative Cloud. I have over 21 years as a professional graphic designer. I'm excited to share my wealth of knowledge! Categories
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