gimp save formats

[Matt Graham]

From: Michael Havens <bmike1 at gmail.com>
> I'm delving into GIMP. What is the best save format? JPG, GIF, etc...

Gimp's native format, XCF, saves all the layers, masks, channels, and
subsidiary information.  If you want to stop partway through editing a file
and return to editing it later, then save it as XCF.  Most non-Linux image
viewers can't read XCF, though, and web browsers can't read XCF either. 
You'll probably save the final version of your image as JPEG, PNG, or TIFF.

TIFF is (well, should be) future-proof, supports multiple pages[0], can store
data losslessly or lossily[1], and has always had support for resolution tags.
 Its many useful features should've made it the image format of choice, but
Unisys caused a great deal of stupid hassle and basically killed it for
wide-spectrum use.

People discussed JPEG vs. PNG vs. GIF and when to use each earlier on this
mailing list.  Refer to that for the full scoop.  Short form:  Photos where
lossy is OK = JPEG.  Line art or logos or things where lossy is not OK = PNG. 
Animation required = GIF, since MNG is not as widely supported. 
(Black-and-white, maximum compression required = TIFF Group4, but you probably
don't care about that special use case.)

[0] Some things don't handle multi-page TIFF very well, though.
[1] JPEG-TIFF is possible, but almost nothing supports it.

-- 
Matt G / Dances With Crows
The Crow202 Blog:  http://crow202.org/wordpress/
There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see