What is the best and highest quality format to save digital pictures in? I recently took my pictures at a photography studio with a digital camera and I want to save them on a CD or disk to save and print them for later use in the future if the real pictures get lost or damage. It is for safe keeping. What is the best file format to save the pictures in? fpx (FlashPix), jpeg, tiff, pcd (photoCD), pict,.....photoshop??? I want to have the best color, clearity, shapness, and resolution as the original but the photograhy place saved it in the native format of the software they use, which cost thousands they said. please help if you know a lot (or a little) about these format quality thing. Thanks.

-- Allen Chow (g3speed@netscape.net), August 20, 1999

Answers

I have resently switched to using .fpx (flashpix) format. It offers me compression, but doesn't seem to loose image quality after repeated edits and saves like JPEG does. Also with flashpix the color balance, brightness, and contrast seem more consitent when I print. The only problem I have had with it is I at times us MS Picture It '99 to save files to .fpx. Other programs don't seem to always be able to read the files saved by Picture It. But I think that is a problem with Picture It because files saved with JASC Paint Shop Pro aren't a problem. If you don't want to use flashpix my next choice would be TIFF.

-- Bob G. (rgreg88721@hotmail.com), August 21, 1999.

For archiving, I would save your file in TIFF format without any compression. You should not experience any loss of image quality this way, plus all imaging applications can open a TIFF file. The only problem is that you will have larger files (no compression...) which will take more room. I would have them burned into a CD, which seems like the most stable storage choice currently, and will not be obsolete anytime soon.

Another choice would be to have all your photos put onto a Photo CD.

-- Chris Kilkus (ckilkus@hotmail.com), August 21, 1999.