If you have a company logo with clear lines and solid colours then TIF file format is the best for you. If you wish to include a chart, graph or line drawing then TIF will give you the best printed result for the file size.

An example of an image best suited to tif format. Looking at this image you will notice that it has solid colours. By solid I mean continuous colours and not blends and fades graduating from 10% to 100% of a colour. Images with clean defined lines and solid colours work fantastically in tif file format and reproduce in print without any loss to the quality of the original.

LZW Compression - ON

Whenever you go to save your image in tif format you will be asked if you want compression on and sometimes what type of compression. You MUST select LZW compression. This dramatically reduces the file size and doesn't lose any quality of the image.

Some programs are now offering different types of compression. They are offering zip and jpg compression inside a tif file. Many printers cannot yet handle these compression types and we have seen no benefit in using them as LZW is so efficient without lose to your image quality.

Most company logos fall into the tif image category. Or if you cannot create a pdf file of your entire business card and you are forced to use jpg or tif file formats, then text is best reproduced from a tif file.

TIF format checklist

  • Solid Plain Colours
  • Logos with solid colours
  • Charts and Graphs
  • Line drawings
  • Cartoon type images
  • Images with Text or sharp lines

Image Resolution

When ever you are creating a tif image file you must set it to a resolution high enough for printing. You must read the Image Resolutions section to get a good understanding of dots per inch (dpi) and resolution when you use tif format also.