Photoshop Elements - Adobe Photoshop Elements 11 for Photographers - page 55

File Type Compression Color Modes Layers Metadata Uses

8

color, Grayscale 99 Desktop publishing (DTP), Internet, publish-

Photoshop (.PSD) RGB, CMY K*, Indexed

ing, photographic work

8

Grayscale 99 The new Elements multi-page document for-

Photoshop Elements (.PSE) RGB, Indexed color,

mat used for saving creation projects and their
contents

9 88 Internet

GIF (.GIF) Indexed color

9 89 DTP, Internet, publishing, photographic work

JPEG (.JPG) RGB, CMY K*,

Grayscale

9

color, Grayscale 99 DTP, Internet, publishing, photographic work

TIFF (.TIF) RGB, CMY K*, Indexed

9

Grayscale 88 Internet

PNG (.PNG) RGB, Indexed color,

9 89 A format used for saving the raw file data

Digital Negative (.DNG) Raw color data

from your digital camera

This table lists the characteristics of different file types and their suitability for use with different tasks. *P hotoshop Elements doesn't
support the CMYK color mode.

'The file formats I use'
Elements, like its industry-leading brother Photoshop,
can open and save files in a multitude of different file for-
mats. It's great to have such a choice, but the big ques-
tion that most new digital photographers ask is 'What
format should I use?'

good compression. As an added bonus, I can also use the
files on both Mac and IBM platforms.

When manipulating or adjusting , I always use the PSD or
the Photoshop and Photoshop Elements format, as this
allows me the most flexibility. I can use, and maintain, a
number of dif ferent layers which can be edited and saved
separately. Even when I share my work, I regularly sup-
ply the original PSD file so that last-minute editing or
fine-tuning can continue right up to going to press. If,
on the other hand, I don't want my work to be easily ed-
ited, I supply the final image in a TIFF format that can be
opened by both Mac and Windows machines.

And like most of the big questions in life there is no single
answer to this query. The best way to decide is to be clear
about what you intend to use the image for. Knowing
the 'end use' will help determine what file format is best
for your purposes. Until we look more closely at format
characteristics like compression, use the way I work as a
starting point. My approach is outlined below.

At the scanning or image capture stage, I tend to favour
keeping my files in a TIFF or raw format. The save op-
tions in most scanning software will usually give you
the option to save as a TIFF straight after capture and
many digital cameras offer the option to store pictures
as either raw or TIFF files. If I need to use JPEG with my
camera to increase the number of shots I can fit on my
compact flash cards, I change the format to TIFF or PSD
after downloading. This way, I don't have to be concerned
about any further loss of image quality derived from open-
ing and saving JPEG files, but I still get the advantages of

With the introduction of multi-page documents from ver-
sion 5.0, any projects produced with the new creations
options are saved in the new Photoshop Elements file
format or PSE.

If the final image is to be used for web , then I use GIF, PNG
or JPEG depending on the number of colors in the origi-
nal and whether any parts of the image contain trans-
parency. There is no firm rule here. A balance between
size and image quality is what is important, so I will try
each format and see which provides the best mix. Only
GIF and PNG have transparency options.