top of page

Graphic Formats

Lossy vs Lossless

File format

  • Graphic image formats fall under 2 categories of compression, Lossy and Lossless.

  • With Lossy, image data is “lost” or reduced for smaller file sizes but can cause poor image quality. Can result in showing “compression artifacts”.

  • Lossless retains image data for higher quality. But larger file sizes.

  • TIF, JPG, and GIF are the 3 most common formats for common activities such as printing, scanning and displaying images over the internet.

  • PNG is a common web format, is high quality and can contain an alpha (transparency) channel.

  • Each format has its own advantage and disadvantages.

TIF

  • Stands for Tagged Image Format

  • Common format for desktop publishing, print, photo, and graphic design.

  • Is a Lossless file format. It retains image data for maximum image quality.

  • Can result in larger file sizes, not fit for display over internet, is not browser compatible.

JPG

  • Stands for Joint Photographers Expert Group

  • Created for digital photography and works best for photo content

  • Is a Lossy format

  • Can reduce an image file size by 10:1 without showing significant compression artifacts

  • The level of compression is adjustable

  • Stands for Graphics Interchange Format

  • Is best for graphics or images that have flat color or even tone, such as a cartoon.

  • Reduces image size by “indexing” color 3 channels to 1

  • Is adjustable by changing color bit levels from 1 to 8

  • Contains no DPI (Dots Per Inch) data for printing. Not a proper format for print.

GIF

Typography

Design & Typography

  • Legibility vs readability

  • expressive fonts/type for eye catching readability

  • Clean serif/sans-serif fonts/type for smaller body copy

  • Dans-serif fonts designed for screen viewing assist in readability

Web typography

Legibility

For optimum legibility, choose classical, time-tested typefaces.

These tyfaces should be drawn and crafted with consistency

Kerning

Tracking

Large Text Blocks: Rags

Consistent Spacing

Graphic File Formats

  • Stands for Tagged Image Format

  • Common format for desktop publishing, print, photo, and graphic design.

  • Is a Lossless file format. It retains image data for maximum image quality.

  • Can result in larger file sizes, not fit for display over internet, is not browser compatible.

Typography is an important element to design, communication and information delivery. It is everywhere yet we rarely recognize it. After todays lecture read through this page and scroll down to see your new assignment...

bottom of page