JPEG, RAW, TIFF: What the File Formats Mean for You

Memory cards and a hard drive arranged on a desk — The format your gallery arrives in is a deliberate choice, not a limitation.

Clients occasionally ask for “the RAW files” without being sure what they’d do with them. Here’s what the formats are, minus the jargon.

JPEG — the finished photograph

A JPEG is the processed, ready-to-use image: color, contrast and sharpening baked in, compressed to a sensible file size, readable by every phone, printer, lab and website on earth. It’s what your gallery is delivered in, at full resolution, because it’s the finished product — like a mastered, mixed track rather than the individual studio takes.

RAW — the unprocessed capture

A RAW file is everything the sensor recorded, with no decisions applied — flat, dark, oddly colored, and unopenable without special software. It holds more latitude to recover highlights and shadows, which is why we shoot RAW and edit from it. On its own it’s an ingredient, not a meal. Handing a client RAWs is handing them raw dough and a bag of flour.

A screen showing a flat RAW image beside the finished edited version — Left: the RAW, as recorded. Right: the same frame, finished. The edit is the work.

TIFF — the archival master

A TIFF is an uncompressed (or losslessly compressed) high-bit file — big, pristine, used to store or hand off a finished master with no generational quality loss. Album designers, magazines and fine-art printers sometimes want TIFFs. Most people never need one; a full-res JPEG prints beautifully to wall-art size.

HEIC, PNG, DNG — the rest

HEIC: Apple’s efficient photo format — smaller than JPEG, not universally supported. Fine on your phone; convert to JPEG to share widely.
PNG: for graphics, screenshots and logos with sharp edges or transparency — not for photographs.
DNG: a standardized ‘open’ RAW format. Still a RAW — same caveats.

So what should you ask for?

The full-resolution JPEGs in your gallery, which you already have. If a specific vendor — an album company, a publication — asks you for TIFFs or a particular size, send us their spec and we’ll export exactly that from the finished files.

Frequently asked questions

Will JPEG compression hurt my prints?

At the quality level and resolution we deliver, no — you can print to large wall sizes with no visible compression issues. JPEG artifacts only show up with heavy re-compression or extreme enlargement.

Do you ever release RAW files?

As a rule, no — the edited gallery is the deliverable and the accurate representation of our work. If a project genuinely requires RAW hand-off, that’s a specific licensing conversation.

Got a vendor asking for a format you don’t recognize? Forward us their spec and we’ll sort the export.

JPEG, RAW and TIFF, in Plain Terms