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File Formats for Digital Images Ever wonder what the difference is between those three letters endings at the end of your digital pictures?  Here's a quick rundown of the difference between .JPG, .TIF, .GIF, and .RAW. Article rating: 7.22

What’s the difference between .JPG, .GIF, .TIF, and RAW files? In this article I will help to demystify these file types.

.JPG - A .JPG file, or JPEG file type is typically used for digital photographs. It stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group. The JPEG committee was created to find a way to compress a still photographic image without significantly changing how the image looks. Many programs today offer a level of compression when saving .JPEGs.

When you choose ‘save as…’ and select JPEG under ‘Format’ in Adobe Photoshop, the ‘JPEG Options’ dialogue box pops up.

You can set the quality of the compression on a scale from 1 to 10, 10 being the highest quality and largest file size. Usually there will be no visual degradation of quality on the medium and high settings (5-10), but below that you will start to see some of the funky things JPEG compression does to reduce file size. One of the downsides of using JPEG is that everytime you save and close a file, the compression does its work. Even when you save it under the ‘high’ or ‘maximum’ settings, some image quality will be lost.

.TIF - TIF  is a lossless image format. When you save a photograph as a TIF, no information will be lost, which also means that the file size will be very large. TIFs are good if you want to save all the color information, but they rarely appear on websites because the files are just too big.

.GIF - The GIF file type is used mainly for icons and artwork with solid colors and sharp lines. GIFs have some wonderful features which make it a popular choice for web graphics. They have the ability to add transparent pixels to the image, as well as store multiple images in one file and play them in sequence. You’ve probably seen many moving GIFs on the internet. GIFs use a different compression method however, and you should never use GIF for photographs unless you want to create a moving image.

.RAW - RAW files are created by the digital camera that shot the image. Most cameras have the option of shooting in RAW or JPEG formats. RAW files contain all the information created when you click the shutter. Most cameras capable of shooting RAW even save the shutter and aperture settings directly into the RAW image file. Each camera manufacturer has their own RAW file format, Canon for example, uses .CRW (Canon RaW), and you will need either the manufacturer’s software to read the file, or you can convert it using Adobe Photoshop. Just look under ‘File> Scripts> Image Processor…’ or in the Bridge, under ‘Tools> Photoshop> Image Processor…’.

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