Computers in the Arts

This page is about how computers are used in art and how they play a crucial role in the modern day art world.

File types

 .Pdf - Pdf stands for Portable Document Format, it is a type of electronic document that converts Graphics, Text and Web Pages to a fixed document.They can be viewed on any platform (Windows, Mac OS, Mobiles such as Android and iOS). it can also include clickable multimedia tools such as videos, audio files, links and buttons. They are very secure files and are used by many Business and Government agencies around the world, you can protect them using a password and can also prevent people from accessing, copying, editing, or printing PDF documents.

JPEG - stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group, It was named after the committee that created the standard. A JPEG is an image type file that compresses the image, but not too much to reduce the quality by much. Internet explorer uses JPEGs because they are still of a good enough quality, but they are much smaller in size compared to the Bitmap. JPEGs are compressed, so they loose some of their resolution, but are still at a very good quality. The JPEG is also used on the internet as an international file type (along with BMP and GIF files) because the size of the file is much smaller than that of a TIFF or a RAW file. because of the fact it’s compressed, it mean that a JPEG is easier to store and keep, instead of having a digital camera taking (for example) 10 TIFF pictures a minute, it can take 100 JPEG’s (on multi-shot).

TIFF - TIFF stands for Tagged Image File Format. It is mainly for the use of photographers and graphic designers. TIFF files are very good quality, but take up a lot of space. Because this file type is meant to be printed, some programs will support the file, where some will not; professional programmes- such as Microsoft Word and Publisher will most likely support them, but professional programmes that aren’t meant for graphics, such as Microsoft Excel and Access will not. There are also two main types of TIFF, Baseline and an extension TIFF. Every program that supports the TIFF will support the baseline, but not many- apart from specialised programs- will support the extensions of the extension TIFF.

The TIFF is better than a JPEG because of the general quality and resolution of the picture. Because TIFF files are meant for professional quality, the file size difference is immense. But because the TIFF is so big, most people don’t have enough space on their hard drive.

EXIF - stands for Exchangeable image file format. An EXIF is a file extension that can be used for image and sound files. EXIF can be added on RAW, JPEG for compressed files, and TIFF for uncompressed files (whether it be sound or an image file). On Digital Cameras, EXIF stores the date and time on the picture taken, and also the camera settings. This may include everything about the camera, from if the flash was on to the aperture setting and white balance. EXIF files are also responsible for the preview thumbnail that appears after the camera has taken the photo. The TIFF structure was the main idea for the EXIF file and in many programs EXIF standards and TIFF standards overlap.

PSD - stands for Photoshop Data File, it is a layered image file used in Adobe Photoshop and is also the default format that Photoshop uses for saving data. PSD allows the user to work with the image's individual layers even after the file has been saved. When your image is complete, it allows you to flattened the layers and convert the flat image into a .JPG .GIF .TIFF so it can be shared.

However once a PSD image has been flatten by conversion it can not be converted back to PSD which means you can no longer work with it's layers.

PNG - PNG stands for Portable Network Graphics. It is a file format used for graphics and developed as an improvement to the GIF.
PNG files support a wider range of colours including Grey-scale and RGB format (Grey-Scale and RGB includes millions of colours whereas GIF only supports 256 colours)
When you save or view a PNG file, all the data is retained as it is a "lossless Compression" meaning it doesn't loss quality.