More about file types and how to use them

The right file for the right purpose
More than perhaps any other computer application, it is important that when working with digital images and applications such as Paintshop Pro, that you appreciate the need to know how to save your images, what file types you should use and what they mean in terms of quality, file size and flexibility.

My favourite file types
The images that you get from your digital camera will most likely be in JPEG format (with a file extension of .jpg, .jpeg). This format is compressed by default and allows your camera to save more images on its memory card.
As soon as you open camera images in Paintshop Pro and edit them, you should ideally save your new images either in Paintshop Pro's own format (.psp or .pspimage), or in the Photoshop format (.psd). the reasons for this are two fold:
1) JPEG is a compressed format, if you save your image again as a JPEG, even without compression set it will still be compressed again - thus losing quality.
2) Paintshop Pro or Photoshop formats do not apply compression - but can efficiently save the file to a reasonable size. Thus not losing image quality. The second reason is that both these formats preserve program features such as layers and type etc. so you can go back and re-edit the image at a later date.

What about all the other image file types?
This can be confusing. There are literally dozens of them - most of them created for specific applications or uses. But these are just a few others you should be aware of:
TIFF. Tagged Image File Format (.tif) is a high quality format used primarily in the reprographics sector (brochure printing). Generally images are uncompressed but there is a version that can compresses but it 'lossless' i.e. does not thro image information away. Photoshop can also save a TIFF preserving layers (but not editable type).
RAW. This is a format used by many high quality digital cameras. Image sizes are larger than JPEG because compression is not a 'lossy'. Few PC applications can use this format in documents or for printing. Images should be saved to one of the other formats after importing them from your camera.
GIF. Graphic Interchange File. A limited colour format used for web site images. Not suitable for printing and usually to be found as web/screen only resolution (low). JPEG is also commonly used on the web and is more successful for photographic images.

So how should you save and archive your images?
You should try and develop strategies for handling digital images that suits you and the way you use images. I would recommend adopting the following strategies:

Archiving all your 'raw' camera images to CD or DVD. If you have a CD or DVD writer in your PC (and most PC's bought in the last 2 or 3 years should have) you should adopt the strategy of immediately copying images straight off your camera and onto CD or DVD to preserve the originals for future use whatever happens. Writeable CD and DVD ROMs are really cheap these days (less than 25p each). It doesn't make sense not to.

Always saving retouched images in native Paintshop Pro or Photoshop format. It takes up more disk space but most modern PC's have plenty of disk space to go round. Likewise, archive these files to CD or DVD eventually.

Only save images in JPEG format for specific purposes, i.e. for use on a web site (including eBay), for emailing to friends and family, using in other applications (Word, Publisher, Powerpoint etc.).

Once you have started changing your images in Paintshop Pro, use 'Save As' to save a copy of your image. Practice saving and resaving images to specific folders on your PC. Too many people struggle with file management and end up overwriting their 'original' images with the retouched ones! Remember, you can never have too many copies of a good image, particularly at different stages of retouching.