Question for knowledgeable graphics guys...

[Major Biggles]

some of you will now the screenshot things i do, and i'm trying to get down to creating some more soon, but i have a question...

i'm working in photoshop, and i work in psd format, but when it comes to exporting it i've always gone straight for jpg...

is that the best way? are there other formats that will keep quality better etc. ?


also, if i'm doing some in high res and wan't to perhaps print them, what's the best format for that? when it comes to graphics stuff i'm pretty clueless, i just picked up photoshop by experimentation.

[moot]

I don't know for sure, but I do know that astronomy pictures from NASA come in two formats, JPEG and TIFF. I suppose TIFF is one format that's fit for minimal quality loss and probably well suited to printing.
Personaly I save as jpg at minimum compression, or PNG when I need an alpha channel.

Someone with formal knowledge will post exact answers, though.

[JB88]

jpeg is not a lossless format.  for large format it is not particularly great.

however, the sizes that this becomes bad is quite large.  

i use jpeg to send to print for my 8x10s so i wouildnt worry too much about it if you arent making something particularly large or are trying not to lose very minute details.

can you give me an example of what you are trying to accomplish?

[Major Biggles]

my screenshot artwork 88. just wondering if jpg was the best way to go for posting to the net, and perhaps from high quality printing...


cheers guys.

[JB88]

for the web it is perfectly fine.  web resolution only goes to 72 pixels so it isnt an issue.

for printing, keep your file sizes large and set to 300 dpi and you should be just fine.

hope this helps.

[Thruster]

.tiff is the standard within the graphics world but for most applications, including web publishing and low resolution finish work low comp. .jpgs are fine.

When I was involved in that stuff, we would usually convert to both. And of course back up to optical media just in case.

It' been a while but as I recall it's important to "flatten" the image prior to export. Save un-flattenned images for when you think you may want to go back and tweak. (for .tiffs)

[JB88]

that's a good point.
but as long as you are saving your files as psd files first, you'll always be able to edit them.

tif file are huge by comparison so it's not really a good idea to use them for web
use.

imho.

[RTHolmes]

keep the originals as .psd, export as best quality .jpeg for web, .png for desktops