Instruction manual

C. TIF or TIFF

TIF (Tagged Image File) format was developed specifically for saving photos

from scanners, frame grabbers, and paint/photo-retouching programs. It is

probably the most versatile, reliable, and widely supported bit-mapped format and

is great for photos you intend to print. It includes a number of compression

schemes and is not tied to specific scanners, printers, or computer display

hardware. However, TIF files are so large that you may only be able to fit a very

few on your media card.

Many digital cameras offer TIF output as an uncompressed alternative to

compressed JPEG. Although it is of lower quality than RAW, it does not require

processing by a photo editing program in order to be useful.

The TIF format does have several variations, however, which means that

occasionally an application may have trouble opening a TIF file created by

another application or on a different platform. However, TIFF files are at least

twice as large as RAW files but they don’t offer the editing flexibility and options

RAW files provide.

The file extension for TIF is .tif

D. GIF or GIFF

GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) is a raster format that uses a limited

palette (256 simultaneous colors at most, but usually uses fewer colors to reduce

file size). GIF is a good choice for graphics such as icons or logos. You can also

make GIF images display in interlace mode, which means that you can get an

overall impression of the picture even before it has fully downloaded, which can

help if you’re sending the image over a slow modem connection.

The file extension for GIF is .gif

E. PNG

PNG (Portable Network Graphics) is a format for storing bitmapped (raster)

images on computers. PNG was designed to replace the older and simpler GIF

format and, to some extent, the much more complex TIF format. PNG supports

full color photos and lossless compression.

For photo editing PNG provides a useful format for the storage of intermediate

stages of editing. Since PNG's compression is fully lossless, saving, restoring

and re-saving a photo will not degrade its quality (unlike standard JPEG, even at

its highest quality settings). Note that for transmission of finished true color

photos, JPEG is almost always a better choice.

Note that not all photo browsers can display PNG.

The file extension for PNG (pronounced “ping”) is .png