Page 38 - graphic standards Demo

Region of Waterloo GRAPHIC STANDARDS and CORPORATE STYLE GUIDE 36
file, it will look blocky, or “pixelated.” When you enlarge a vector graphic, the edges of each object within the graphic stay smooth and clean. This makes vector graphics ideal for logos, which can be small enough to appear on a business card, but can also be scaled to fill a billboard. Common types of vector graphics include Adobe Illustrator, and EPS files. Many Flash animations also use vector graphics, since they scale better and typically take up less space than bitmap images.
Bitmap
Most images you see on your computer are composed of bitmaps. A bitmap is a map of dots, or “bits,” that looks like a picture as long you are sitting a reasonable distance away from the screen. Common bitmap file types include BMP, JPEG, GIF and TIFF. Because bitmap images are made up of a bunch of dots, if you zoom in on a bitmap, it appears to be very blocky. Traditionally, GIF files are used for web graphics, jpeg graphics are used in PowerPoint presentations and simple graphics in Word. Tiff documents are also used in Word and Excel documents.
GIF Files
“GIF” stands for “Graphics Interchange Format”. What you should know is that a GIF is a compressed image file format. GIF images use a compression formula and are based on indexed colors, which is a palette of at most 256 colors. This helps greatly reduce their file size. These compressed image files can be quickly transmitted over a network or the Internet, which is why you often see them on Web pages. GIF files are great for small icons and animated images, but they lack the color range to be used for high- quality photos.
TIFF Files*
Tiff stands for “Tagged Image File Format.” It is a graphics file format created in the 1980s to be the standard image format across multiple computer platforms. The TIFF format can handle color depths ranging from 1-bit to 24-bit. Since the original TIFF standard was introduced, people have been making many small improvements to the format, so there are now around 50 variations of the TIFF format. A TIFF file contains the most information available for an image and is the best file format for high end printing.
JPEG Files*
JPEG actually stands for “Joint Photographic Experts Group,” because that is the name of the committee that developed the format. A JPEG is a compressed image file format. JPEG images are not limited to a certain amount of color, like GIF images are. Therefore, the JPEG format is best for compressing photographic images and viewing on your computer screen. If you see a large, colorful image on the Web, it is most likely a JPEG file. However, JPEG is a “lossy“ format, which means some quality is lost when the image is compressed. If the image is compressed too much, the graphics become noticeably “blocky.” Like GIFs, JPEGs are cross-platform, meaning the same file can be viewed equally on both a Mac and PC. JPEGs cannot be used for high resolution artwork or offset printing. Recently, JPEG has become the most popular universal format, because of its small file size and Internet compatibility.
EMF
“Enhanced Meta File” is a graphics file format on Microsoft Windows systems. Windows Metafiles are intended to be portable between applications and may contain both vector graphics and bitmap components.It is often used as the prefered format for GIS mapping software.