File formats determine the kind of information to be saved in a file, the compatibility with various software applications and the exchanging of data in the production . There are some factors affecting the saving of a scanned image. Which program you'll use to post-process the image? How much disk storage is available? Will you exchange the file with others during production or the eventual output media?
Please refer to the following table.
File Format | File Extension | Recommended Output Media |
Advantages |
---|---|---|---|
TIFF | .tif |
|
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EPS | .eps, .epsf |
|
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PCX | .pcx | Multimedia, Presentation, Video | Used by most software application. |
PICT | .pict, pct | Multimedia, Presentation, Video |
|
BMP | .bmp | Multimedia, Presentation, Video |
|
Targa | .tga | Multimedia, Presentation, Video |
|
JPEG | .jpg | Multimedia, Presentation, Video |
|
File compression schemes fall into two general categories:lossy and lossless. Lossless compression schemes pack the data in a file without actually deleting information, therefore, there is no loss to image details, color or output quality. The lossless compression options include the disk and file compression utilities (for example, DiskDoubler, PKZIP, ARJ or LHARC) and the type of TIFF format with LZW (Lempel-Ziv-Welch) compression.
If the 2:1 compression ratios are not high enough, lossy compression has to be considered,.The most popular lossy compression option is JPEG standing for the joint Photographic Experts Group, which developed the compression standard JPEG.Compression ratios can be selected from 2:1 to about 40:1 by your requirements..