As a digital designer, I am always working with digital art files and as such need to know which file types are best. Here I break that all down.
The best file type for digital art is a .TIFF file. TIFF aka TIF – Tagged Image File Format – files can be lossless when saving so they lose no data or quality. TIFF provides the best quality for printing or displaying digital art and images offline. TIFFs can be edited and saved as JPGs or PNGs for use on the web as needed without losing quality.
JPG files are best for detailed digital art and photos on the web. PNG files are best for simple digital art or art that requires transparency on the web.
Digital art relies on files to exist however it can exist on many platforms. TIFF file types and formats are best overall and in this post, I’ll go through why it is. I’ll also address file types for digital art in regards to printing, web, and social media.
Best File Format for Saving Digital Art
TIFF is the best file format to save your digital art in.
Tagged Image File Format or .TIFF files have the ability to store image data in a lossless format saving ALL the quality of your digital art.
It goes without saying your art must have the data for the TIFF to use. TIFF files do not add data or quality to pictures just by being TIFFs.
For example, for a simple line stick figure drawing – a TIFF file vs a JPG may visually appear exactly the same because the data is limited as is.
Quality is determined directly by the amount of data in the file. So more data translates to more quality and all the quality is saved in a .TIFF
For TIFFs to carry all that data .TIFF files need to be larger than the more common JPG and PNG image file types.
Paying this price in size TIFFs manage to avoid having any JPG artifacts that degrade a JPG image.
Please note the fact that TIFFs are a lossless file type. They are not adding any data or quality to your existing file types of lower quality.
Saving or converting a JPG or PNG to a TIFF does nothing for your quality even if the file size increases.
You need to provide the data for the TIFF file from your original program that you are creating the file in and save from there as a .TIFF
TIFFs use LZW for lossless compression of files.
TIFF files are capable of using 1-48 bits per channel for color along with RGB, CMYK, LAB, or Index color modes.
More bits per channel essentially allows for more colors in your image or digital art. TIFFs can reach up to 48 bits per channel and therefore allow for the most colors.
TIFFs can also store multiple layers, pages or images in a single file allowing future editing without overwriting or loss of data.
This is due to the complexity of 3D medium with colors, lighting, and layers
Unfortunately, TIFF is not natively supported in most browsers including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft Edge.
So while TIFF is the absolute best file format for digital art it is not the most widely supported.
Since the TIFF stores ALL the quality and data of your digital art it is the absolute best file format.
You can convert the TIFF to other file types like JPGs and PNGs as needed using programs like Photoshop or a simple free built-in program like Paint on Windows.
Best File Format for Web Images
JPG (JPEG) is the best file format for images online.
JPEG is an acronym for the Joint Photographic Experts Group, who created the JPEG file format which was later shortened to .JPG.
JPGs use lossy compression meaning image data is lost from your digital art when you save to this format. Unfortunately, that is the price you pay to go online.
But as long as you are using a JPG file online the visual difference in quality to a TIFF file is negligible. As long as you do not edit or print your digital art TIFF and JPG will display almost exactly the same.
Obviously since browsers do not support TIFFs we cannot do a true comparison here in the post visually. However if you’d like you can save the images below and compare for yourself to see the difference if you can.
I linked the same example of digital art above as well as photo examples to show how even at the complexity of a photo a JPG still visually looks the same as the TIFF.
Starting with a TIFF you can save out to a JPG to get the best quality for space while gaining support for web platforms like browsers and apps.
JPGs take a lot less storage space than TIFFs. Smaller sizes make using them on the web and apps like Instagram and Facebook much better as internet speeds and storage are limited.
JPGs do not store multiple layers, pages, or images. One JPG can only contain one image.
JPGs color depth is only supported going up to 8 and 16 bits per channel widely on most platforms. While all TIFF viewers support at minimum 16 bits per channels and can go up to 48 bits!
JPGs do not offer transparency like TIFFs limiting certain uses where transparency is needed.
Is PNG or JPEG Better For The Web?
JPG or JPEG is the best file format for photos and detailed digital art on the Web. PNG is the best file format for digital art on the web when simple or it requires transparency.
PNG offers the perfect compromise between a TIFF and JPG file with transparency and lossless compression like a TIFF. But PNGs are a smaller size than TIFFs and widely supported like JPEGs for the web and apps.
PNGs can take up a lot more storage space than JPGs for the same image if it is a detailed piece of digital art or a photo.
This happens because since a PNG is lossless it has to store more data than a JPG for a similar image. Particularly images with more colors.
The more colors an image has the more data it needs. The more data an image has the bigger the file size.
To combat this PNGs are usually available as PNG-8 and PNG-24 files.
PNG-8 files have a bit depth of 8 meaning they are limited to 256 shades of colors.
PNG-16 or PNG-24 files have a bit depth of 16 & 24 supporting 65536 & 16777216 million shades of colors respectively. This allows them to provide an equivalent visual to JPGs with transparency albeit at a much bigger file size when using those colors.
JPG files are optimized using lossy compression to be able to maintain more colors without having to keep a lot of the data a PNG needs to have.
Putting it into perspective with exact measurements the below example with photos demonstrates the difference in size between a JPG, PNG-8, and PNG-16 file of the same photo.
While the difference is there visually between the JPG and PNG 8 it is almost not noticeable. Only when you zoom in can you really see the difference, as shown below:
This is why overall in most cases for detailed digital art, photos, digital painting, and graphics JPG is the superior file taking up a fraction of the space while maintaining better color and quality.
However, if you look at an example of digital art similar to the vector graphic below, a PNG is actually the smaller file with the same quality.
For simple digital art like this with limited colors or art with a need for transparency a PNG is the best file format.
