Photoshop Fumbling File Formats - What’s the Difference between Them?

Photoshop software is capable of just about every application relating to creative tasks that you can dream up, but because the program does so much, there are many different file formats to choose from. In fact, there are 20 to be exact - in which you can produce and save your work. Choosing the right one is of paramount importance; if you work with the wrong format, you will not be able to properly reproduce your work. If you familiarize yourself with the file format options, you will always make the right choice and your work will come out looking like the vision you had of it in your head.

JPEGS, or the joint photographic experts group format, is probably the most commonly used file type in Photoshop. JPEGS work best for photographs and web graphics, because it offers a range of choices for saving the image that allow you to balance image compression and image quality. This format is great for building websites and sharing photos online. However, you should remember that JPEGS are a lossy format, which means each time you re-save the file you lose a little bit of quality. For this reason, you should not save files as JPEGS if you plan on re-editing them frequently or if you plan to print them.

TIFF, or tagged image file format, is another frequently used file type in Photoshop. This format is the best one for printing. There is not quality loss, and it is compatible with both PC and Mac software.

Photoshop PDF, or photo document format, is best used for publishing text and image documents on the Internet. This format is easily accessible to anyone with any kind of operating system, as long as they have Adobe Acrobat Reader. If you have a long document that you want people to be able to zoom in and out of and follow internal links, then this is the file format for you. Another bonus is that you can use vectors in Photoshop PDF.

The Pixar file format is best used when you want to save 3-D graphics. As you might imagine, this format is the same format used to create the famous Disney Pixar animated films, like “Toy Story.” Obviously, Pixar files are fun to work with, but only people doing highly specialized work really have any need to use them, and they work best if you have a Pixar workstation. While you can open Pixar files and save files in Pixar format in Photoshop, unless you are creating 3-D graphics, you won’t have any need to use Pixar files.

The Compuserve GIF, or graphics interchange format, is an extremely popular format to use when you need to keep file sizes small. GIF files can save 256 colors; great for web graphics, but not so great for photographs. This file format is completely adequate for graphics, but stick to JPEGS for photographs.

Other popular file formats in Photoshop are exclusive to certain operating systems. BMP, or bitmap, files are Windows file from the Microsoft Paint program. PICT files are Mac graphics files. These two formats are incompatible with each others operating systems. Other file types are highly specialized, like Filmstrip, which is used exclusively for film editing. Targa is used for video editing.

There are other file formats out there to be used in Photoshop, but these formats are the most common. Which one you choose depends on the job you need to do. If you are creating graphics or images for someone else’s use, make sure to consider their operating system and choose a file format you can both access.