File formats are used for many purposes and you should have a basic idea of what types they are and what they are used for. These files are commonly used in our location. There are graphics file formats used for printing and others are used for on-screen viewing or online publishing. Each type has variations within each group and within each group there are file formats better than others depending on what you need. For example, gif and jpg are good for online publishing. There are other file formats that are used for this same task but these are more common. A file format of the type eps and tiff are more commonly used for printing. They provide quality images for printing. For information about your next document scanning project, please contact us.
For on screen display, JPG or JPEG are more suitable. A gray scale jpg is capable of displaying very high quality images and are commonly used throughout the industry for this reason. Additionally, this file format may be compressed to provide small files that occupy less computer space while still providing good quality. A word of caution here, when compressing files, some quality is compromised. Depending on the quality of the starting file and the necessary result, compressing the files has its limits.
Here is another characteristic of file format that may be of some interest. Files are capable of holding different amounts of colors. Each file format will have a reference to the number of bits that the format is capable of supporting. 1 bit per pixel equals an image with 2 colors. 4 bits per pixel is an image capable of holding up to 16 colors. An 8 bits per pixel is an image that can have up to 256 colors. And 16 bits per pixel refers to an image that can be up to 32,768 colors. A 24 bits per pixel are less common and refers to an image that can be 16,777,216 colors. For your next document scanning project, be sure to identify what level of color is most acceptable for the images.
Here are some file format and common applications.
GIF Web Screen display Web Photo Images
JPEG, JPG Screen display Online Photo Images
TIFF, TIF PostScript printers High quality printing
