From the course: Photoshop 2024 Essential Training

Understanding file formats - Photoshop Tutorial

From the course: Photoshop 2024 Essential Training

Start my 1-month free trial

Understanding file formats

“

- [Instructor] There are a variety of formats that you need to familiarize yourself with when you're working with images in Photoshop. To simplify, I'm going to divide them into three areas of the workflow, original source or capture file formats, working or master file formats, and output file formats created for specific devices. Today, most photographs are captured as either JPEG files or Apple's HEIC or as raw files. JPEG and HEIC make up the majority of images captured on mobile devices, and are almost always an option on larger DSLR or mirrorless cameras. Both JPEG and HEIC file popularity is based primarily on the fact that the files are really small, so you can store a large number of photos on a single mobile device or card, and they can be written to these devices very quickly. However, the reason that the files are small is because these formats throw away information using a process called lossy compression. Depending on the amount of compression, which we don't always have control over, the quality of the photograph can range from very high, where it's difficult to even tell that the file is compressed, to very low, where compression artifacts such as banding between colors or large blocks of color start to become very noticeable. The primary issue is that these file formats that use the lossy compression have significantly less flexibility when making adjustments such as changing colors and tones in Photoshop. Because of these potential problems, when given the option, many photographers prefer to capture images using a raw file format, because raw formats don't throw away any information using lossy compression. They still use compression, but it's a different type of lossless compression that doesn't discard information, so the quality of the image is not compromised. This gives raw files more flexibility when making edits and enhancements to the image after capture, because there's more information, there's more colors and tones to work with. Now, most camera manufacturers have their own proprietary raw file formats. For example, the Nikon proprietary raw files have the extension dot NEF and Canon uses dot CRW, but they're all still considered raw files. The DNG format, the digital negative, is another raw file format, but it has a significant difference. It's not proprietary. Instead, Adobe chose to make it available to other software developers so they can read and write DNG files. Not only do several camera manufacturers capture directly into the DNG format, it's now also available on several mobile devices. In addition, any raw file from any camera manufacturer can be converted to the DNG file format using Lightroom, Lightroom Classic, Camera Raw, or the free Adobe DNG Converter. Alright, the next group of file formats are used to save what I would refer to as working or master files, and are used when saving multi-layered documents from Photoshop. They include PSD files, TIF files, and Adobe Cloud documents. These are the formats that most designers start with. So designers don't usually start with a raw file. If a photographer captures an image as a raw file, they'll usually retouch it and then save it as either a TIF file or a JPEG or PSD, and then hand that file off to the designer. Now, both Photoshop or PSD and TIF files save all of Photoshop's features, such as layers and masks and type and shape layers and paths and smart objects and more. They both use lossless compression to decrease the file size, but the quality of the image is not compromised. The biggest difference is that a TIF file can save larger files, up to four gigabytes, whereas Photoshop can only save up to two gigabytes. Adobe's cloud documents, they're a special format designed to help transfer large files across devices. For example, between Photoshop on the desktop and Photoshop on the iPad. When you save a document as a cloud document, the file is saved in Adobe's cloud instead of on your local device. And these files have special features such as the ability to save only those portions of a file that have been edited, making it much more efficient to share these files between devices. They also automatically keep track of versions as you work, and they have additional collaborative editing options. Now, the last group of files that are used is when it comes time to output and share your files to either be printed or displayed on a specific device. In most instances, you'll want to save a derivative or a copy of your image that's been resized and optimized for that device. To reduce file size, these output file formats often flatten the image, so there's no layers, and they compress them, so that it's easier to upload or transfer the files more quickly. Exporting or saving a copy allows you then to return to the working file or the master file if you need to make changes to it. When sending images to be printed, it's best to ask what format the lab or service provider prefers. Ideally, they would request a flattened TIFF or PSD file in order to maintain the highest quality possible, but it's often faster and therefore more desirable to upload or transfer and print JPEG files. So if you're sending JPEGs, just be sure that the quality setting remains high, or you may see unwanted banding or artifacts in the image. When saving files to view on a screen such as a phone or a computer monitor, or if you're posting online, JPEG is, again, the most common format, because of its ability to create small files that download quickly. Now before we wrap up, there are two specialty file formats that I want to mention. PNG is a popular file format to save type or graphics for the web that need to display transparent areas. For example, PNG would be an ideal solution for displaying a round logo or type that requires transparent edge areas, because the PNG format will render smooth edges around the transparency. PNG is more typically used with flat art or graphics and not photographs. The GIF file format has the unique ability to contain an animation within the file, and it's often used to create ad banners and other short animations to view on screen. GIF files are compressed using lossy compression, but in a different way than a JPEG file. To save as a GIF, you have to convert your image to a different color mode called index color, which only allows 256 colors. So again, it's not the best format to use when working with photographs, and although the GIF file format supports transparency, it only supports one level, which means that if you have a circular logo or type, the edges are going to look jagged. We'll talk more in depth about GIF files later in this course, when we create an animation in Photoshop. Alright, that wraps up this overview of the most important file formats that you'll run across when you're working in Photoshop and when and why you would choose to use one format over another.

Contents