Technical Support    

IMAGE FILE TYPES

Camera file types are many, to name a few: bitmap, tiff, jpeg, png, raw, pdf, pcx, pict, stn, gif, epd, and psd. The most commonly used types are JPEG and TIFF. Tiff files create an image that is not compressed when saved so that you loose no picture data. Why would I want to loose picture data. Well normally the human eye can only see so much detail, and also the size of the uncompressed images is usually very large. Files being sent over the internet or being saved to a CD or DVD are time or space sensitive. Sending a large file over the internet takes a relatively long time. Reducing its file size by compressing it not only saves time to upload or download, it also reduces disk space for storing. A Tiff image and a JPEG image (that has been saved only a few times or less) will print almost exactly alike, and the human eye will not be able to tell the difference. JPEG files reproduce excellent prints, take up less storage space and upload and download quicker over the internet. You do not however want to save and resave a JPEG image. If you are perhaps working on a photo in Adobe's Photoshop and are doing some manipulations and you do a little work, decide to take a break and save it, come back work on it some more and then go to lunch, saving it before you go, and do this several times, every time this is making a new copy of your file and more information is compressed or lost. Saving an image a few times is okay, but resaving time after time, will only reproduce a pixelated looking print that you will not be happy with.

RAW files are very popular, but they are not standardized yet. JPEGs can be opened on any computer (Mac or PC) with almost any software (Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Paint, Corel Draw, etc), and on any platform (Unix, Windows, or Apple's operating systmes). Nikon, FUJI, Canon, Kodak, and everyone who makes a digital camera has their own version of a RAW file. RAW files have an incredible amount of data or information in it. Exposure and color issues being predominent, however these RAW images are so complex that most printers have trouble interpolating all that data when trying to print it. If you must work on a file; either color adjusting, manipulating, or retouching an image, then work on it as a RAW file format. You can save a RAW file and a TIFF file as many times as you want without losing image data. But when you are done, you will need to convert it to a JPEG to be printed. Remember saving a JPEG just once is NOT a bad thing. It's like making a VCR tape, recording the first show always looks good, but the more times you record it, the worse the replication of the movie.