Vector_Files
Vector_Files
Here is some information about the different file extensions, what they are an acronym for and
what that means:
EPS - Adobe's EPS format (Encapsulated PostScript) is perhaps the most common vector image
format. It is the standard interchange format in the print industry. It is widely supported as an
export format, but due to the complexity of the full format specification, not all programs that
claim to support EPS are able to import all variants of it.
AI - The native format of Adobe Illustrator is the AI format (Adobe Illustrator Artwork), a
modified version of the older EPS format. The AI format is fairly widely supported, but is less
ubiquitous than the EPS format, and most programs that read AI can also read EPS.
PDF - Adobe's PDF format (Portable Document Format) is very widely used as a general
purpose platform-independent document format. And while it is not exclusively used as such, it
is also a very good vector image format.
SVG - The W3C standard vector image format is called SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics).
Inkscape and recent versions of Adobe Illustrator and CorelDRAW have good support for
reading and writing SVG.
DXF - Drawing eXchange Format. A CAD format from Autodesk, used by CAD tools from
many different vendors. Some programs have difficulty reading DXF files with splines (curves),
so the Desktop Edition supports line+spline as well as line only output modes.
There is an extremely large number of different bitmap formats. Some of the most common
include: JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, and TIFF. These formats are generally not good for printing
unless they were created just for that purpose at the print size.
Lossy image formats (e.g., JPEG) have smaller file sizes but do not store a perfect copy of the
image. They are best suited to photographs and other images where perfect accuracy is not
important. They are also commonly used on the web to save bandwidth.
Lossless image formats (e.g., PNG, BMP, and TIFF) store an exact pixel-by-pixel representation
of the image, but require more space. They are more suitable for things like logos. Arguably the
best of these formats is PNG. It is widely supported and has very good compression.
JPEG/JPG - One of the most widely-used image formats is the JPEG format (Joint
Photographers' Expert Group). This format has excellent compression characteristics and has the
nice feature that the user may specify what level of compression they desire, trading off fidelity
for file size.
We do not recommend using JPEG files for rasterized vector art, as the compression artifacts
substantially degrade the quality of the image near edges.
PNG - The best of the lossless image formats is called PNG (Portable Network Graphics). This
format is widely supported by web browsers and image viewers/editors.
BMP - There are actually several BMP formats (BitMaP). Windows and Macintosh have their
own formats, both of which are called BMP. Most modern image editing tools are able to read
both.
TIFF/TIF - This format (Tagged Image File Format) is used to store raw bitmap data by some
programs and devices such as scanners. This format comes in a compressed and an
uncompressed variant. The former is comparable to PNG, while the latter is more like BMP.
Please note that saving one format as another format, does not change the type of file. For
example, taking a JPEG, which is a compressed image and saving as an EPS does not make the
image an EPS. It is a JPEG disguised as an EPS and will not work for printing.