PSD vs. TIF vs. PNG

[Dennis Leppell]

I prefer tif, since our company also publishes a couple of magazines every months….it’s a pretty universal format for us.

PSD is also good. I use this for simple layered graphics, which I can then animate/manipulate each layer individually without a trip to AE.

[Todd Gillespie]

It really depends on your needs and your project.

As Dennis mentioned, you can manipulate the layers if you use a Photoshop file, but FCP creates a sequence for each psd file, so it can get cumbersome for some editors.

tif is a great format, very little compression-but large file sizes.

My standard practice is to create the images within PS, then save the graphics out as .pict files with alpha channels-leaving a ‘Master’ psd file, if I ever need to change things. But if I were doing print work, I would probably just stay with tiff.

Good Luck,

Todd at UCSB
Television Production