Photoshop Tutorial:File Formats Part 2
Photoshop gives you the option of choosing how compressed you want the image to be and Adobe Image Ready will allow you to resize the image until you have found a size that holds the colour and doesn’t loose any image quality or become highly distorted. PNG – Portable Network Graphics, is a format that has only recently been developed and is most popular for web Design use. The PNG file format compresses files differently than a JPEG does and the end result is it leaves better photographs because it has the ability to maintain millions of colours a photograph may hold including transparent layers but the file size still stays small. The only downfall of this file type is if you are using a PC the Internet explorer doesn’t support it.
Another popular format used for web design UK is a GIF – Graphics Interchange Format, this type of file isn’t good for photographs due to the colour limitation but is usually used for Illustrations and Graphics or web design England logos with solid areas of colour because this format loads the object quickly and it can be animated and can hold transparent colour. GIF files can contain one or more images with 256 colors or less. The images using a GIF are compressed using LZW compression, reducing the file size by 30-50% or more. Interlaced GIF’s are formats that load gradually, the interlaced GIF file allows the user to see parts of the image building up while it’s loading but interlaced files will take longer to decompress, and this means that they may take more time to download, although the user may think its downloading faster because they have something to look at or watch, it usually isn’t worth the decompression time for small files. GIFs can also have transparent backgrounds and this means you can also see the underlying background image or colour.
My personal opinion of the JPEG vs. GIF argument is that although they are usually confused as the same file they are actually very different and if used correctly create very different results, if they are used for the wrong content then the result will not be effective, generally I would say use a JPEG for photographs only as there is no limitation with colour so no colour will be lost or replaced, and use a GIF on original artwork that only holds a few colours like Graphics, Logos, Animations or Illustrations, as using a JPEG for work like this would distort edges where there needs to be a sharp contrast in colour.
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