Re: "Standard" or "best" image format?

From: pixel fairy (pixelfairy@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri May 12 2000 - 13:04:16 PDT

  • Next message: Nick Lamb: "Re: "Standard" or "best" image format?"

    > the format to be
    > portable so that it can be used by all software.
    > Are there other
    > considerations that I have neglected?

    tiff can save arbritary information in "tags" which
    sometimes other programs cant read, for example a tiff
    saved in photoshop has a pair that gimp cant read. but
    this can save information like an ICC profile or gamma
    information. png is probably the smallest portable
    format, but the only thing it saves besides pixel data
    is gamma. another advantage of tiff is the ability to
    store more than one image in a file. an image viewer
    can use this to read/write thumbnails and the like.

    gif is also a bad choice because of its limited color
    depth (256 color pallet). if you want to avoid
    proprietary nastiness make sure you dont save tiffs
    with LZW compression. PNM is simply the easiest format
    to read/write and probably the most portable since
    images can be stored in plain text.

    overall, tif is the most flexible and should probably
    be your default, with png for when you need smaller
    file sizes.

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