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Chapter 12: Taking Great Pictures
Microsoft Digital Image Standard User’s Manual
File Formats
There are many file formats designed for digital pictures. Digital Image can
work with JPEG, TIFF, and many other file formats. If your camera allows you
to choose file formats for your pictures, you can decide which format to use
based on your particular criteria: photo quality, file size, or compatibility with
other programs.
The JPEG format is the most common format for photos. JPEG files are versa
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tile, since they can accommodate over 16 million colors, can be compressed,
and can be viewed on almost any computer and in any Web browser. To reduce
file size, the JPEG format always uses compression, although the degree of
compression varies by camera. Experiment with the compression settings on
your camera to find a low-compression setting that produces good or excellent
results. Because JPEG uses some compression every time a file is saved, many
photo purists prefer formats like TIFF over JPEG.
The TIFF format provides an extremely accurate recording of digital-image
data. Some cameras can use a lossless compression method with TIFF. But even
with some compression, TIFF files are much larger than JPEG files for pictures
with the same resolution. For example, a single uncompressed 5-megapixel
TIFF image is larger than 10 MB. To work with pictures of that size, you need a
lot of memory on your computer and a high-volume storage disk.