Thursday, October 8, 2009

File Format in Photoshop?

Which the best format for saving images in Photoshop? PSD, JPG or PDF? I would like to start using PDF, It saves bytes over PSD, but I'm a little concerned over quality loss.



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Always keep your original in PSD if you can (and look into extra storage, you can burn to CDs or DVDs or use an external hard drive, so that your files don't use up the space on the internal hard drive.) This keeps the highest level of quality and preserves all layers (unless of course you flatten the file.) This advice applies if you plan on doing more work on a file.



Saving as PDFs, you can select different quality settings when you save, based on the ultimate purpose of the file. Always do this as a SAVE AS, so again you keep the original file. PDFs are intended for various purposes, including sharing: because anyone can download Acrobat Reader for free, they can see your files. And you can save versions that are quite small for e-mailing or uploading the Web. You can also save PDF versions that preserve the Photoshop editing abilities; with these you can reopen them in Photoshop.



JPG you should use when needed, for uploading photos to the Web, and so on. It is a common format, BUT do not use it for editing. The disadvantage of JPGs is that they use a "lossy" compression algorithm for saving: each time you open, edit, and resave a JPG image, it tosses away data from the image and eventually you start seeing the quality decrease.

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