Image File Formats and More

Raster File Formats:

JPG/JPEG: Short for Joint Photographic Experts Group, is one of the most widely used image formats worldwide across Websites and social media. Has lossy compression meaning the image quality is somewhat degraded and lacks support for transparency.

PNG: Short for Portable Network Graphics, is another widely used image format. Unlike JPEG, this is a lossless compression format meaning that most of the image quality is not degraded.

GIF: Short for Graphics Interchange Format, Is notable for supporting animated images to be played in a sequential format. The drawback of this file format is that it only supports up to 256 colors which by today's standards isn't great. Nowadays it's commonly used for memes and other funny images.

BMP: Short for Windows BitMaP, is an uncompressed raster file format capable of storing high-quality image data in a single file and can be transferred across other Windows PCs and be viewed without losing quality. The drawback of this file format is that the size of these files can be quite big and also it really only works well on Windows PCs. Even though it can be viewed on Macs and Mobile Devices, the quality will be degraded.

TIFF: Tagged Image File Format is widely used for Fax Machines and Printer Scanners, it is also used by Graphic Designers and Photographers due to the File Format's ability to store high-quality images with minimal compression. Just like BMP the file size can be quite big and it's unsuitable for Website design as it can slow down and lag your webpage.

HEIC/HEICS: Widely used by Apple and Samsung devices to store images taken with the camera app, this file format is useful for storing onto a flash drive as it has a very small file size, almost half the size of an average JPEG file. A drawback is that it isn't supported by many image editing programs, meaning that only very few such as Lightroom, and Photoshop support this format for editing.

PSD: Adobe Photoshop's native file format, it can also be opened by InDesign and Illustrator as both of these programs will preserve most of the features due to the tight integration within the Adobe Ecosystem. This file format can also be opened with Photopea.

PSB: Essentially the same as a PSD, except it can store very large images and tend to have a large file size due to this.

RAW: The file format most professional cameras (Nikon and Canon) will output images once taken, its file size is very large because it stores high image details and has very minimal compression. It can be quite hard to process these images due to their large file size.

(BONUS FILE FORMAT) WEBP/WEPPY: Largely used by Google to make loading times faster on websites, has a small file size making it an efficient file format. This format is supported by browsers such as Edge, Firefox, Chrome, and Opera. Often hated by people in the same way people hate rats (They just hate them)

Raster Image Editors:

Adobe Photoshop: One of the most popular raster image editors. Photoshop supports cropping, filters, adjustments, removing backgrounds and objects in an image, and with Plugins, Photoshop can support a whole lot more. It's also one of the most pirated programs on the planet along with FL Studio and Microsoft Office.

Photopea: An online image editor, it supports opening and editing Photoshop's PSD, Illustrator's AI, Raw files, and more. It is often notable due to its many similarities to Adobe Photoshop.

GIMP: Short for GNU Image Manipulation Program, it can manipulate images in many ways similar to how Photoshop can, and also just like Photoshop, GIMP supports plugins and has its own proprietary file format called "XCF". But unlike Photoshop, It's free and it's also available for Linux, unlike the others on this list.

Procreate: An image editing app available only on MacOS and iPad.

(BONUS RASTER IMAGE EDITOR) paint.net: Despite the name, this is a free image editing program that is available only on Windows. It can manipulate images in a similar way Photoshop and GIMP can. It also has its own proprietary file format called "PDN" and has a lot of plugins available. Unlike Photoshop though, it lacks support for vectors (Not even the Line tool draws as a vector).

Vector File Formats:

AI: The native file format for Adobe Illustrator, It can also be opened with Photopea

PDF: Short for Portable Document Format, it is very useful for storing images with minimal loss of quality. It is commonly used for Maps, Articles and Reports. and can also store fonts and audio.

SVG: Short for Scalable Vector Graphics, It is written in XML code although you can simply draw an SVG Logo or Shape in Illustrator or Inkscape.

INDD: The native file format for Adobe InDesign, It can also be opened with InCopy.

EPS: Short for Encapsulated PostScript, This is basically the same as SVGs except it isn't written in XML code.

AIT: The drawing template format for Adobe Illustrator, It is mostly used to create multiple .AI drawing files with the same styles and formatting.

Vector Image Editors:

Adobe Illustrator: One of the most popular programs for creating and editing logos, packaging designs, web graphics, and more.

Adobe InDesign: Although this program supports the creation of vectors, InDesign is more suitable for creating brochures, magazines, pamphlets, posters, and presentations with multiple pages.

Adobe Photoshop: Although Photoshop does have support for creating and editing vector files such as .EPS and .SVG, It is more suitable for Raster Images.

Coreldraw: Yet Another vector graphics editor capable of creating logos, posters, packaging designs, brochures and other designs.

Adobe Animate: A program suitable for creating animations for video games, cartoons, and TV shows. However, Most Graphic Designers don't really care about the animation aspect and just want to make a banner that responds to the user's interactions or just like the UI and features of Animate.

(BONUS VECTOR IMAGE EDITOR) Inkscape: Probably the only free Vector Image editor to ever exist on this planet, This is also one of the few vector editors also available for Linux (Unlike the other programs which only support Windows and/or MacOS), You can create many illustrations such as cartoons, clip art, logos, posters and pamphlets and uses .SVG as its standard format for saving files, although the user can also export to a PNG or PDF.

Layout Formats:

INDD: Short for InDesign Document, This is Adobe InDesign's native format, This format includes things a page layout would need such as fonts, and formatting information such as guide lines and grids.

IDML: Short for InDesign Markup Language, This basically has the same functions as an INDD except this is made for compatibility with older versions of InDesign.

Layout Editors:

Adobe InDesign: The most popular Layout Editor to date, This supports the creation of multi-paged magazines, brochures and pamphlets

Adobe Illustrator: Although you can create great looking posters and pamphlets, Illustrator lacks support for making multi-paged documents like InDesign can.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Society of Illustrators at 128 East 63rd Street, Lexington Avenue, New York, New York, NY 10065 Trip Reflection

Image
 To summarize, my experience in the trip was great. especially in the Character Design workshop where we learned how to fold and make a zine (pronounced zeen) which is a small book consisting of 8 pages (including the cover), also we learned how to make character turn arounds which involves drawing a sort of target on which ever part of the face depending on the position of your character and then you draw the eyes and the rest of the face.  This is what the Zines look like This is what I meant by "character turnarounds" and "targets" Anyways moving on from the Character Design I took a pic of some designs that really caught my interest (about 14 but i will only show 2 because why not) The text is sort of unreadable because the original image was blurry. I tried using the unblur feature my phone had and its still quite unreadable. If you still cant read this, it says: Medium: Ink crayon, handmade stamps, paper collage. digital Imprint: Alfred A. Knopf Publisher: Pen
Read more

Gestalt Principles on Grid

Image
  Figure Ground Symmetry   Similarity   Proximity  Alright so we are back with doing Gestalt Proximity but we are doing it on grids this time, honestly, I think I put little effort into the work except maybe the second design, for the First design, I did sort of a "yin-yang" design, I have nothing else to say its quite bland. Anyway for the Second design, I clearly did Symmetry, I even went a little further and used the 'gutter space' as Adobe InDesign calls it to write the word "symmetry", I am quite happy with this design myself. For the Third design, I did Similarity where some of the text in the boxes would be bolded and form a T-shape, you could also consider this as Figure-ground. Finally, for the Fourth design, I did proximity where at least 2 grid spaces would space out all of the text boxes.
Read more

300ppi VS 72ppi Resolution

1. What is the difference between 300ppi and 72ppi? The difference between 300PPI and 72PPI is that 300PPI is higher resolution, You are cramming more pixels into an inch. Hence the PPI which means Pixels Per Inch 2. Why is that important for the graphic designer doing print projects? It's important for Graphic Designers as when you try to increase the size of a 72PPI to fit the layout of a magazine or poster, It looks like a pixelated mess which hurts to look at. Whereas if you try to resize a 300PPI it won't look that bad, Sure it will start to look a little pixelated but it would still be pleasant to look at. Well, there might be a situation where 300PPI is too big for your project layout so you can decrease the size and it would still look great overall. 3. Why is that important for the web designer doing websites?  It's equally important for Web Designers, But you also have to be careful, if you insert an image that's too big such as a 1000PPI image your Website wi
Read more