When working in a digital space, there are a multitude of different ways to save your work. When you save a file, whether that be a photo or a text document, there are different formats to choose from when saving it. You might recognize some of the more familiar types of files such as .JPEG or .doc, but what is the point of all these different types of files, what do they do, and how are they applied to visual media like photography? Here is a list of the most common types of files, their uses and what they mean in terms of saving your work.
.JPEG - This is the most common file type for images. When you edit a JPEG image in Photoshop the program has to decompress the image and recompress it again upon saving. Because of this, every time you open, edit and close a JPEG image in Photoshop the image quality degrades more and more. Therefore it is best to work with images in a lossless format which editing, such as RAW (which you can choose to shoot in when using your camera) or TIFF, then convert to JPEG only once you’re sure you don’t need to edit anymore.
.TIFF - or tagged image file format- TIFF files tend to be much larger than JPEGs, Most scanners automatically produce TIFF images. You can save TIFF images with LZW compression in Photoshop which is a lossless compression scheme. TIFF images are written slightly differently for Macs and windows, but in most cases, either system can recognize TIFFs written on the other.
.EPS - or Encapsulated Postscript Format- Generally considered the standard for printing, this is a lossless image format, written in the language laserwriters speak (postscript). EPS images are slightly larger than TIFF images, and each application that can create EPS images writes the code in a slightly different way (which can sometimes lead to problems). Still it gives the output device the most control over the image. If you have to send a file to a printer, EPS is usually the best format to use.
.GIF - or Graphics Interchange Format- This type of file is only used in websites. GIF images are good for images with flat areas of color, such as logos on a website. They are able to have transparent areas, and can also contain multiple images so that on a web site they become an animation. (this is how we get the memes we all know and love on social media)
.PNG - This was created to update/replace GIFs because they can retain more colors and be transparent while also being smaller in file size. This makes them good for web graphics as well.
As usual, there is always more to learn, but I hope this list helps clear up some of the confusion that can result from not knowing what all these different formats mean and what they are used for. Hopefully this also helps with any frustration that can also occur from having something saved as the wrong file format and therefore it not working properly!