I want to screen capture som maps from the web (Google maps). Having a screen resolution of 1280 x 800 I want to save the file with 8 bit Color Depth. What will be the best choice for me: TIFF or PNG? I know from a theoretical point of view TIFF might be better - but does it matter when we talk about screen captures?
PNG have a much smaller filesize than TIFF after capturing the same screen image. So if the quality is the same for TIFF and PNG given the fact that the image source is a screen capture, then off course PNG would be to prefere.
Does anybody know something about load-time for PNG versus TIFF? I would not expect a difference here, but I do not know.
Interesting question, I was always under the impression that PNG was a superior format based on the fact I really don’t see much use of TIFF in the wild (perhaps it is not as widely supported on the web) however PNG seems to be a good format for providing a solid balance between lossy compression and file size so I would generally go for that.
TIFF is used mostly as a non-compressed file format. In order to make images for display purposes on the web you want to streamline the amount of information contained in the file (ie. compress) and therefore you mostly see TIFF used for images destined for use in print.
JPG, PNG and GIF all use forms of compression to allow the maximum amount of image data to be retained while keeping file sizes small. If your images aren’t destined to be downloaded and printed I’d use a format other than TIFF for the web.
For the record too, most image libraries use JPG to deliver their images even for the high quality large pictures purchaseable for hideous amounts of money. They use the maximum settings which apply the least amount of compression to the images to retain the quality.
TIFF image can be compressed too :agree:
Also you can’t compare JPG’s and PNG’s compression algorithm as the former offers the lossy one, while the latter - lossless. This makes PNG (32-bit) format close to TIFF rather than JPG.
Yes TIFF can be compressed but that’s not the norm for print and typically only done on large images were electronic file transmission is a problem. That is why I said “used mostly as a non-compressed file format” The default position is to retain as much information as possible without compressing the information, otherwise you may as well use a different format to send the file. (I’d like to see you supply CMYK PNG files to a printer and not get laughed at.)
My point was to keep my post as simple as possible to avoid confusing the issue. TIFF is not used as a web format by preference when there are other more approriate formats. Are you suggesting a 32-bit PNG file is the superior format for this posters use?