Digital Graphics File Formats

Dan Bell

Raster Graphics

• Raster graphics are the tiny pixels that record the colour information, they have a fixed resolution. These are also called bitmaps, when a camera says mega pixels it is relating to how many pixels separate the pixel information.

Vector Graphics

• Give a definition of Vector Graphics. Vector graphics are defined by a start point and an end point, with curves and angles between them. From the information paths can become lines, squares, triangles or curvy shapes. There is never any loss in definition, they are ideal for things such as company logos which can either be on a small business card or a huge billboard.

Raster Graphics

JPEGStands For Joint photographic experts

Used For/Example These are be used for things such as web formats and photos shared on Facebook or other forms of social media.

Advantage The advantages of jpegs are that they can be universal, they are the best format to use for colour photos.

Disadvantage There are many disadvantages to jpegs. These include the fact that they will lose some quality with multiple edits due to compression and recompression each time they’re edited.

TIFFStands For Tagged image file format

Used For/Example They’re used for desktop publishing which is popular with graphic designers. Adobe InDesign documents are saved as TIFFS.

Advantage They can save multi-page documents into a single TIFF file. They also do not lose any quality due to compression (has the option of lossless compression)

Disadvantage TIFF files have size issues. 1 TIFF file can take up to 100MB of storage. They consume hard disk space very quickly

GIFStands For Graphics interchange formats

Used For/Example GIFs are used for small digital animations on the internet. A series of images used in a loop to create, the appearance of the video.

Advantage Reasonably small file size which means they can load quicker online and still be of a good quality.

Disadvantage They only have a maximum colour palette of 256 which can lead to a poorer type of quality.

BMPStands For Bitmap image file

Used For/Example For any type of bitmap. You can use it for Window’s screensavers.

Advantage They never have any loss in compression therefore should always be good in quality. They also have a large file size.

Disadvantage It does not tend to resize images very well. It may be easy to scale down an image without loss of clarity but it is very hard to do it the opposite way round.

Vector Graphics

PSDStands For Photoshop document

Used For/Example They are used for image manipulation, front cover images for magazines.

Advantage It saves layers, page formatting info, swatches and many other features.

Disadvantage Disadvantages are it can be very complicated sometimes and also that it can also only be read in Photoshop.

AIStands For Adobe illustrator art

Used For/Example This program can be used for the creation of logos which are companies will use to represent themselves.

Advantage They can be scaled large as smaller vectors and have no loss in definition.

Disadvantage It is rather complicated to use and can leave you with some huge file sizes.

FLAStands For Flash file

Used For/Example Used to create animation and games.

Advantage These can be used to produce high quality files. They can include both sound and video.

Disadvantage It can only produce smaller file sizes.

WMFStands For Windows metafile

Used For/Example They are used for logos.

Advantage Can be scaled both big and small as vectors and they have no loss in definition. They can also hold both vector and bitmap components.

Disadvantage Does not provide any unicode support. It also stores coordinates as integers.

File Format Capture and Optimising

CompressionDefinition Compression is the way in which in which

file sizes are reduced by reducing the amount of information you have saved.

Advantage It provides less disk space (more in reality). It is much faster writing and reading and has a variable dynamic range.

Disadvantage The images can become a lot more pixelated when they’re compressed.

Image CaptureMethod Scanner

Allows you to digitise physical images such as sketches.

Method CameraIs the way you would take pictures of real

life things/places such as buildings.

Method Graphics TabletIs a piece of technology that allows you to

take images on a type of handheld computer.

OptimisingWhy would you optimise? You would optimise to ensure easy

viewing on the internet.

How can you optimise? By changing image size in photoshop options: reduce image sizeReduce bit depthReduce resolutionCompressing images

Advantage to optimising As said in the why section they are very easy to view on the internet.

Disadvantage to optimising Occasionally it can take a long time to download.