Do you ever see the different ending letters on a file (called an extension) and wonder “what does it all mean!?”. We are here to shed some light on the different file types out there, using the most common ones you’ll come across.
 
JPG or JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group – ie. the group that created this standard of file)
Jpegs are the most common file types for photos. For example if your photographer sends you a couple images over email, most likely they will be jpegs.  They can be high quality but low in size which makes them ideal for sending over email. You can edit them in a photo editing program, like PhotoShop, but you can’t edit them in a vector based program, like Illustrator.  They are not always the BEST quality, like for printing, but they come pretty darn close.
 
PNG (Portable Network Graphic)
This is generally used on websites. It is too low quality for printing, 72dpi. So if someone sends you a PNG and says please can you use this on my brochure? You must always say NO!
 
PDF (Portable Document Format)
These are great for information spreading. They are mainly for viewing, not editing.  For example, if you’re a real estate agent, and you want to send your client a brochure with pictures and text via email, a PDF if a great way to do it. You generally will save a PDF from a program like Word, and then sent it, then the client will open it and view it – rarely will they edit it. For designers, PDFs are great because they are vector based, which means even if you can’t edit it in Acrobat, it can be edited in Illustrator.
 
AI (Adobe Illustrator)
A vector-based file, created and edited in Adobe Illustrator. Unless you have this program, you probably can’t view it.  These files are generally used by graphic designers and printers. It can also be edited in InDesign, another Adobe product.  AI files are high quality, so they can be quite large, and they are great for printing.
 
PSD (PhotoShop Document)
These files are usually common to photographers, and will be used for editing purposes & layers.  These are also quite large and not really good for emailing.  They can be printed, but usually a designer or photographer will export it as a JPG or TIFF (we’ll save that for another day!) for printing.