Greetings,
I'm wanting to save graphics created in Photoshop in a format that will cause the least compression of DPI. These images will be printed. What is the best file type to save the .PSD file for minimal DPI compression? I believe .JPG does a lot of compression. I don't know about .GIF or .TIFF files.
Thanks in advance for all feedback.
#1
No format will compress the image's resolution, which is measured in PPI, not DPI.
JPEG offers various levels of compression, all cause some of the image data to be altered irreversibly. Worse yet, subsequent saves will enhance this degredation, making the file worse and worse. Moral: DO NOT USE JPEG FOR WORK OR TO ARCHIVE IMAGES.
GIF compression is lossless, that is, nothing is lost whn using GIF compression. However, GIF only supports up to 256 colours in an image, so it is useless for archiving artistic or photographic work.
TIFF files can be compressed or not. Unless you use JPEG compression, the compression will not cause your image to change at all. The results of compression depend largely on the original image. Photographs do not compress well, but rendered images like logos and 3D renderrings can be compressed for considerable savings. TIFF's other great advantage it its near universal support. Just about every graphics program used in the last twenty years can read and write TIFF images, so it's been here for a while, and it's not going away.
TIFF images do not support transparency or Photoshop layers. For that, you will be best sticking with PSD files.
If storage space is not a primary concern, your best bet is uncompressed TIFF files.
#2