Digital images formats older than 30 years?
Digital photography is not only limited to the photo’s that you take with your digital camera but there are many other digital image formats that can be used or have had their past history and are almost gone forever, nevertheless, to me, it is always a good thing to know what was available before this era of new technology and how were this files used.
Today, most digital photographers tend to jump into the latest and greatest tech thus using the latest image format as soon as they purchase their camera and don’t really look over all of the available digital formats or they don’t know what they are there for.
There is so much out there and being able to see what is available and use it is so very important when choosing a digital format for your image. Having said so, this article will go through some file formats that probably today are not even used anymore, but for some time they were the real thing.
There are a few formats that have stood the test of time and are still somewhat usable in digital photography.
The first format that I would like to discuss here is the PICT file. This old file format was originally created by Apple in the middle of the eighties and their use was meant to be be for both bitmap and the vector-type of images. Although you can still theoretically use these files formats, newest versions of the Mac OS have dropped support for it, so unless you have an old machine you might run out of luck.
You may wonder what was so special about these files. The first is that they were extremely easy to work with. They have been around for quite a while and have been used by professionals. They were ideal for retouching photos and editing or adjusting photos. Since images files were stored mainly in CD or DVD’s at that time and these files had a compression type similar to jpeg, you could store a lot of pictures on one disc. That was a huge time saver!
Another format that has been around for a long time is the TIFF format. This stands for Tagged Transfer Format. It was created so that you could do some basic conversions and editing in software without having to deal with bit depths or color correction. At the time the TIFF file come out not many other formats could handle transparency and that was definitely a bonus, however on the drawbacks, TIFF files are quite large in size and only suggested for print jobs.
The biggest drawback to TIFF files is that they aren’t very portable. Since they are bitmap files, they are not very appropriate for transferring large images. Many people will want to edit a photo in Photoshop and only need the TIFF format to show what they’ve done.
If they need to transfer the same image in another format, it would be much more cumbersome. Another disadvantage of TIFF files is that there are now several different versions of the format available, so you’ll need to choose a program that can read them. TIFF files can be opened by most software available today and they are still in use.
JPEG is a common format from the late eighties that is still used widely today. The JPEG format is a compressed file that is widely used for websites and web apps because of its small footprint even though it doesn’t have the same kind of useful features as other new formats such as the webp. There are a variety of versions of JPEG available, with some programs capable of handling all kinds of images, while others work better with certain file types.
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The next format that are worth looking into is PNG. This format is relatively newer as it came out in the nineties but is well worth considering if you’re planning to make a lot of digital images on a regular basis. PNG files are portable and they are still today widely used for web version of images with transparent background.
Another great and amazing “survivor” of the older file formats for digital images is the GIF. Who doesn’t know this format? This files where the beginning of animation in web pages and for some times were the “king” of the action on HTML based sites. However, with the advent of software language such as action script (Macromedia Flash) and later HTML5 their role faded away almost at the point to disappear altogether.
But, surprisingly, the new generations of teens have decided to use them again for their favorite memes and from a few year to this day this file format have seen a spike in popularity and use, to the point that thee are today entire archives sites dedicated to the the search and use for this files (see the liles of Giphy or Tenor). So this amazing file format is still up and running at full steam today even though they belong to the late eighties era.
The final format, we’ll look at today is the Raw format, which is basically the beginning form of the TIFF format. It’s the most compatible format for a lot of pictures, although there’s a limit on the size of the file itself. If your images are a bit large, you might be better off with the larger TIFF format or jpeg especially if you’ll be using the pictures for web purposes.
It’s also worth keeping in mind that while Adobe has included the Raw format in all of its software, this format is more indicated for the real professionals as they offer perhaps the best version (in terms of details and minimum noise) of an image so if you are aiming at everyday use, don’t bother.
Digital Designer, blog writer and also a tech enthusiast.
He loves to write content for blogs, podcasts, design websites, logos, brochures, banners and anything that sends a message to an audience.
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