JPEG, TIFF, PDF or TIF? What are the benifits?

[KlassicMotion]

I'm working on scanning in my favorite magazine articles so I can get rid of my paper copies. My HP scanner gives me the option of JPEG, TIFF, PDF or TIF. I don't know what the benefits are of any of these formats. I'm thinking it might be beneficial to be able to cut and paste pictures and texts from these articles. Also, some of the pictures in these articles would be a nice addition to my car porn pics. Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

[Draker]

For a magazine.. I'd go with a multi-page PDF.

[SS320]

I've never really had any trouble with PDF or 'portable document format'

[Tristin]

If youre going to assemble them into one document, then I would go with PDF. If you want individual scans then I would go with tiff. 

[ggzilla]

jpg and tif/tiff are for images.

 

PDF is for documents. Magazines are documents.

[thisismatt]

I would think PDF would be the most ideal, since you could turn the articles into searchable text.  All others are purely image formats (assuming that last one was supposed to be GIF).  TIFF would be the next best since it can be lossless.

[Laecaon]

PDF for documents.

 

Gif,tiff and png support transparency, jpeg does not.

[KlassicMotion]

Cool thanks.

To clarify, my scanner has two options: "Photo" and "Document". Under photo, it has "JPEG" and "TIFF". Under document it has "PDF" and "TIF"... ??

[Tristin]

You dont have to use PDFs for documents... just because what you put into the scanner is a document, doesnt mean you have to scan it as such. You can scan documents as tiffs or jpegs all day long and use them just fine. What you would use pdfs for would be if you wanted to scan multiple pages of a document or even just pictures, and compile them into a single file with multiple pages. Have 10 individual page pdfs do you no better than 10 individual tiffs. 

 

The file formats are for what you plan on doing with with the things youre scanning and not what youre actually scanning. 

[thisismatt]

Except PDF allows you to use actual text and vector graphics, maintaining 100% clarity without loss or artifacts, etc.  All the others are just pictures of text, which is never ideal.

[Tristin]

Sure, but not from scans... 

[Laecaon]

Well then you also have to look at file size. Pictures with that much detail start getting huge.

[Tristin]

Very true. It depends on what you want them for again... tiffs were made for documents just like pdfs so you can use either, but each has its benefits. Youd have to look at the compression of the scanner which I bet any of the "Walmart" scanners have poor compression. In that case I would choose tiff over pdfs. I would also choose tiff if I didnt want searchable text. 

 

Buy really, in todays computer world size doesnt matter unless youre going to be transporting these on a thumb drive or emailing them to everyone. HDD space is easily available (unless youre like me on an Air...  but still I have plenty of externals). 

[DanielC]

Is there any format that is easiest to edit?   Can you cut and paste text out of the PDF, or other formats?

[Watson]

I would stick with PDF considering it is a widely used format for e-readers and applications that serve the purpose of viewing digital publications.

 

Is there any format that is easiest to edit?   Can you cut and paste text out of the PDF, or other formats?

You can edit PDF documents will Adobe Pro. What the extent of editing is, I'm not sure.

[thisismatt]

Is there any format that is easiest to edit?   Can you cut and paste text out of the PDF, or other formats?

 

You can at least use OCR to make the PDFs have real text and not just an image of text, which means you could search it and copy it, unlike any image format.

[Tristin]

Is there any format that is easiest to edit?   Can you cut and paste text out of the PDF, or other formats?

 

PDFs can be edited but only with searchable text. If you design and build a PDF then its probably already set up for searchable text. You can then edit or copy any of the data (if not locked by the creator). If you do scans of documents or older PDF versions, then youd have to convert it to searchable text first, then you can do what you want with it. Building and converting pdfs needs special software (Acrobat Pro) and some word editors have the feature. You can design say a Word or Pages document and then export to PDF. You dont quite have all the features of Acrobat Pro, but it has a lot of useful ones that a basic user would use most often.

 

I build PDFs all the time for personal use in Pages. 

[KlassicMotion]

Thanks for the help guys!