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Companies face a lot of challenges when attempting to keep secure and accurate archives of information due to documents being created, changed, and revised every day. There are a great deal of creative applications which are beneficial to workflow and business challenges, especially when it comes to larger companies with unique locations. Converting to a standard format has many advantages, including improved communication and productivity, the trick is to decide on the best format.

PDF, TIFF and JPEG are three distinct file formats that are used often during these times of electronic information. Many factors play into the decision to change formats, including how the information will be used in the future. The following factors should be carefully considered when deciding on the type of file format to use and when to use it:

Accessibility & Productivity

Converting documents to readable formats (converting PDF to TIFF or PDF to JPEG as examples) process workflow and worker productivity. This will also improve collaboration and communication between colleagues.

 The TIFF standard has inspired many versions since its introduction. The compression format of a JPEG image, which is utilized primarily due to the fact that it is browser supported, unfortunately creates a reduction in quality using a lossy format, as it requires compressing of the file prior to restoration or sharing.  Because of free readers, a standard format and the ability to preserve the document's integrity, PDF files are now more frequently kept in that format instead of being converted to TIFF or JPEG.

Searching and Storing: TIFF is a raster format and needs an OCR engine scan. There are many reasons why PDF is simply a far better archiving form than TIFF, one of which is that PDF files are usually far more compact than TIFF, usually requiring a mere fraction of the memory space that TIFF files require, and with far better quality to boot. It is quite a big advantage when doing an electronic file transfer to use the smaller file size when possible. Structured objects, such as vector graphics, text and raster images, can easily be kept in PDF format. It also permits quick and effective full-text searches. PDFs let you embed metadata such as title, author, creation date, modification date, subject and keywords. The same is true for things like TIFF formatting; a file which improves storing and retrieving.

JPEG Layout:  Records are preserved here. There are a variety of different formats for image files, but you cannot easily do a text search. Moreover, there is usually an absence of any real word content, but can be given a specific title, or in other respects recorded and naming attributes are used to archive and locate them. OCR can be used to scan JPEG images of documents, and then they can be searched via text.

PDF documents have many benefits not supported by TIFF. TIFF formats aren't useful for Web pages as browsers don't support that format - while Adobe's plug-in allows PDFs to be easily delivered via Web pages.

You can eliminate the need for file type conversion because the TIFF, JPEG, and PDF work the same on both Macs and PCs.

There are no security protocols in TIFF and JPEG formats, and people who use this can only use a portion of the documents. With PDF, however, you get an excellent security system that can be used to set the access passwords to documents or restrict their usage.

PDF to TIFF and/or JPEG - Should You Convert?

Though TIFF files are stable in the long term and have a solid structure, they are not easily searchable. Evolving business requirement are dictating the need for greater functionality of the PDF format because of document storage. Companies usually use the JPEG image file compression for storage and Web compatibility for color image files. PDFs also let you insert JPEG images and include searchable text within them, which makes them a lot more useful.

Portable Network Graphics (PNG) Format is a good alternative format to JPEG. GIF format is the new version which has taken over the place from the old PNG Format; GIF format keeps the file intact with clearer picture quality and reduced size of file. (Soon we will provide more information about PNG format, and other kinds of files, in publications that will come out later.)

Any means of making, sharing and storing documents and image files has their own positives and negatives.  Luckily for us all, most of this information may easily transfer from one version to another and be very accurate.  Ultimately, the file format that is used is up to the user or organization, and limited by their business requirements.