Goal

The goal of this project is to intro­duce the file types used in design pro­duc­tion and to cre­ate a con­sis­tent and effi­cient process to man­age files for use in print and dig­i­tal workflows.

Objective

Pro­vide an overview of print pro­duc­tion related file types.

Back­ground Reading

• Dab­ner, p 134–135, p 146–147

Lecture

The inclu­sion of the three let­ter exten­sion on a file name is a good habit for Mac OS users. It allows for sys­tem recog­ni­tion of dig­i­tal files on sev­ers, email, web or Win­dows OS. The fol­low­ing file types are com­monly used in print and mul­ti­me­dia pro­duc­tion. This list should not be con­sid­ered com­plete or absolute due to near con­stant soft­ware updates and mul­ti­ple author­ing applications.

• Joint Pho­to­graphic Experts Group-JPEG (.jpg):Photo, or con­tin­u­ous tone, images for the web. Mil­lions of col­ors pos­si­ble. Var­i­ous set­tings allow for best qual­ity to file size ratio. Should never be used for print production.
• Graphic Inter­change For­mat-GIF (.gif):Flat color images for the web. Lim­ited to 256 col­ors. Sup­ports a transparancy option. Var­i­ous set­tings allow for best qual­ity to file size ratio. Should never be used for print production.
• Portable Net­work Graph­ics ‑PNG (.png):A com­bi­na­tion of JPEG and GIF. Like the JPEG, the PNG sup­ports Photo, or con­tin­u­ous tone, images for the web. Var­i­ous set­tings allow for best qual­ity to file size ratio. Like the GIF It sup­ports trans­parency in an alpha chan­nel or a des­ig­nated color. Sup­ported by most recent browser appli­ca­tions. Should never be used for print production.
• Hyper­text Markup Lan­guage-HTML (.htm or html):WWW stan­dard. Can be writ­ten is a text pro­gram such as Sim­ple­Text or Word­pad or in a web browser like Netscape or IE. Can be cre­ated by an exter­nal pro­gram such as Macro­me­dia Dreamweaver or Adobe GoLive.
• Macro­me­dia Flash-FLA (.fla): Vec­tor ani­ma­tion and inter­ac­tion pro­gram. Native author­ing for­mat. Allows EPS, JPG, GIF, AIFF and Quick­time import.
• Macro­me­dia Shock­wave-SWF (.swf): The pre­sen­ta­tion for­mat of the Flash author­ing files. These files are not editable on by other pro­grams. Small file size makes Shock­wave suit­able for post­ing on the web or as an inde­pen­dent application.
• Macro­me­dia Direc­tor-DIR (.dir): Image ani­ma­tion and inter­ac­tion pro­gram. Native author­ing for­mat. Often decribed as more “robust author­ing envi­ron­ment” than Flash, Direc­tor is older, and until late bet­ter for large graph­ics and video play­back. Recent updates allow SWF inte­gra­tion as well as EPS, JPG, GIF, AIFF and Quick­time import.
• Macro­me­dia Shock­wave-DCR (.dcr): Not to be con­fused with the .swf, the .dcr file is a pre­sen­ta­tion for­mat of the Direc­tor author­ing files. These files are not editable on by other programs.Small file size makes Shock­wave suit­able for post­ing on the web or as an inde­pen­dent application.
• Macro­me­dia Shock­wave Pro­jec­tor (Pro­jec­tor or .exe): A self con­tained SWF or DCR file, except all soft­ware needed to play the file is embed­ded into the file. Files are plat­form spe­cific to Mac (Pro­jec­tor) and to PC (.exe). Direc­tor requires a plat­form spe­cific ver­sion to cre­ate this file.
• Apple Quick­time-MOV (.mov): Used for video, ani­ma­tion, and sev­eral sound for­mats. Allows for some links and inter­ac­tion. Widely dis­trib­uted to sev­eral com­puter platforms.
• MPEG3-MP3 (.mp3): (Also known as mpeg 1, layer 3) — A com­pressed audio file for­mat that uses psy­choa­coustic mod­el­ing to reduce file size sig­nif­i­cantly, while retain­ing good audio qual­ity. Pop­u­lar for use on the Inter­net and in per­sonal music players.
• MPEG4-AADCM (.mp4): Advanced Audio Cod­ing — (Also known as AAC, MP4, or mpeg 1, layer 4) — A com­pressed audio file for­mat that uses psy­choa­coustic mod­el­ing to reduce file size sig­nif­i­cantly, while audio qual­ity rivals that of uncom­pressed CD audio. MP4 is a fairly new stan­dard and ris­ing in pop­u­lar­ity for use on the Inter­net and in per­sonal music players.
• Win­dows Audio Wav­form-WAV (.wav): Sound files used by Win­dows OS. Can be read by Quick­time and oth­ers on Mac OS.
• Audio Inter­change File For­mat-AIFF (.aif or .aiff): Sound files used by Mac OS and on com­mer­cial CD’s. Can be read by Quick­time and others.
• iMovie: Video edit­ing files that com­bine raw source files into one (no links). Large file size may make dif­fi­cult to trans­port. Read by some Apple prod­ucts (Mac OS only).
• iDVD: DVD video author­ing pro­gram. Read by some Apple prod­ucts (Mac OS only).
• Final Cut Pro (.fcp): Pro­fes­sional video edit­ing soft­ware. Reads, imports and exports many dif­fer­ent audio and video formats.
• Adobe Flash Video (.flv and f4v): Flash con­tainer for video codecs, pri­mar­ily H.264 and VP6.
• Adobe After Effects (.aep): Motion ani­ma­tion in 2D and sim­u­lated 3D space.
• Maya (.obj): 3D mod­el­ing and ani­ma­tion program.
• Scal­able Vec­tor Graph­ics (.svg) Open stan­dard for­mat for sta­tic and motion vec­tor graph­ics, com­prable to Adobe Illus­tra­tor and Flash, respec­tively. Lim­ited func­tion­al­ity and implementation.
• MS Pow­er­Point (.ppt): Basic pre­sen­ta­tion soft­ware that com­bines graph­ics and text. Uni­ver­sal to most com­put­ers (PC) if sys­tem fonts are used.
• Disk Image (.dmg): Used as a CD rom to trans­port groups of infor­ma­tion (like instal­la­tion disks). Usu­ally ready only.
• Scal­able Vec­tor Graph­ics (.svg) an open stan­dard for­mat for sta­tic and motion vec­tor graph­ics, com­prable to Adobe Illus­tra­tor and Flash, respectively.