What are the differences between photo formats?

What are the differences between photo formats?

Mark Comon (Vice President, Paul's Photo, Torrance, CA) gives expert video advice on: What are the differences between photo formats? and more...

In your digital camera you have the choice of three file formats that you're going to use. JPEG which is what I recommend for most people for most photographers. RAR which is what serious photographer and the computer friendly people. And finally TIF which use to be a big popular format but kind of fallen by the wayside today. Let's talk about whyyou would use one or the other. The advantage of a JPEG file is the image comes right out of the camera onto the memory card. You can put it in any computer anywhere and look at it. It's really cool, because JPEG's are universal between MAC and Windows. I can send a JPEG to China, Japan I don't care and everybody can look at it as a picture. If I shot a RAR picture, the RAR picture is specific to my camera. So if I have a Nikon D2, or a Canon 3D or whatever camera the RAR pictures I make are specific to that camera and I must use a piece of to convert that RAR data into a picture. So if I shoot with RAR, I can't send you my file unless I work at it in the computer first. That's the definition of RAR. Why is RAR better? Because in the computer I have the opportunity to correct the image, to make some changes to the image without any lose in picture quality. One of the difficult things today is to make the picture look on my screen like it does on your screen, when I send it to you, and I know for a fact that TIF is very difficult that way so that's why TIF is kind of going by the wayside. RAR and JPEG are the top file formats today.