TIFF (which stands for Tagged Image File Format) is considered the standard photographic file format, because it is a highly flexible format that uses a lossless compression algorithm, so there’s no image degradation during compression.

JPEGs are perfectly fine for most uses of digital photography (hence their overwhelming popularity), as they are smaller files and make distributing the snapshots of your trip to Hawaii or a wild night at the club that much easier. Each subsequent re-edit and save of a JPEG further reduces the quality. In addition, the re-edited and saved image loses still more quality (think of it as Xeroxing a photocopy). correcting color, sharpness and increasing the size of the image). JPEG compression discards so much information that it is much more difficult to effectively post process your image (i.e. You can adjust the amount of compression, so you can control the image quality and the file size. JPEG usually achieves a 10:1 to 20:1 compression with little perceptible loss of image quality. However, JPEG is perhaps the worst of the three, because the compression algorithm used to save the image disregards far too much image information that cannot be reconstructed during decompression. When you shoot using JPEG you get more photos on your memory card, and it’s faster (in terms of saving the image to the camera and in photo manipulation later). JPEG (which stands for Joint Photographic Expert Group) is the most popular form of storing digital images.

High quality file formats for pictures