If you’ve ever created a presentation or more formalized electronic document, you’ve no doubt run into graphic file formats like JPG, GIF and PNG. Maybe you asked a co-worker for a photo or logo and have been asked for clarification. What do you want? Where it will be used?  Maybe you have Photoshop but aren’t quite sure how to use it. Often in desperation, you grasp for the common JPG and say to yourself, “Whatever, it doesn’t really matter!”

Well, in fact, it does matter. Simply put, graphic file formats vary greatly from one to the next. They all have different color depth, compression and transparency – all suited to particular types of images and media. Since the subject is very deep and technical, we’ll just stick to the basics.

Scenarios

Let’s identify a few situations you might run into.

Logos – Every presentation has a logo, right? Logos are line art graphics with a handful of colors (think Nike, FedEx, Home Depot). GIF/PNG will give you clean crisp lines with solid colors and is the format of choice. You want to stay away from JPG for logos, as it will make the edges and colors look poor. Designed for photos, JPG compression creates ugly artifacts against clean lines.

Expert Tip: If you’re going to put logos in an Office document, use a PDF vector logo. It’s universal and you can size it to any dimensions without compromise (provided it’s a vector PDF).  A graphic professional can create this with software like Illustrator. Once you have this, you’ll never have to get another version!

Photos – A picture is worth a thousand words, but it only looks good if it’s a JPG. JPG uses millions of colors instead of hundreds, making it well-suited to display photographs. JPG will use compression to lower the file size, which is not typically noticeable unless pushed to extremes.

Charts & Graphs – If you are having a designer create a chart or graph, then this falls into the category of line art graphics. Like logos, you’ll want to use a GIF or PNG to get a clean rendering. The readability of the text and lines is the most important thing to keep in mind. Here again, if you can get a vector PDF export of the chart, you’ll have the ultimate in quality and flexibility.

Text – Sometimes you have styled titles or visually treated text that is a graphic. You guessed it; you should use GIF/PNG. For optimum readability you want clean lines with no edge distortion.

Transparency – If you want to cut out the white background of an image, you need to use transparency. For our discussion, the files that can support transparency are GIF, PNG and even PDF.  But they will have to be exported specifically for this and often professionally tweaked to provide the best end presentation.

Sizing

Now that you have a file format selected, you will also need to think about dimensions. How big is it? (Pixels wide by pixels tall.)

All of these graphics should be created or exported at the size you wish to use them – the last thing you want to do is stretch it. Microsoft makes it all too easy to size a graphic up or down, but resist the urge. Sizing a graphic up or down makes it look blurry and can distort the shape. If you are unsure about an image already placed, Office allows you to investigate its properties and make sure it is set to 100%.

Samples

Still not convinced? Sound like techno-babble? Take a look at a few samples to see what we’re talking about.

Conclusion

In the world of graphic file formats, this is only the beginning. In addition to many more professional formats, there are variants that offer more options than discussed here. But hopefully this will get you started in the right direction.

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