After your graphic designer delivers your logo, you will find a folder full of the same image in various file formats. You may want to upload the logo to Facebook or get some new business cards made. Should you use the.JPG, or do you use a.PDF? Also, what the heck is an.AI or.EPS file, and why do you need them?
Here is a crash course on different logo file types and when you should use them and should not.
Social Media Platforms (Facebook, Instagram) | .png, .jpg |
Website | .jpg, .png |
Marketing Materials | .ai, .eps, .png, .pdf |
Sponsorships | .eps, .pdf, .png |
Edit the logo | .ai, .psd |
Encapsulated Postscript, or EPS for short, is intended to put images or drawings in a document and is pixel-perfect at any size. This feature makes .eps an ideal file type for brand images, logos, and print advertisements
You can open and edit.eps files using design software such as Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw Freehand, or Adobe Photoshop. You can even use .eps files to add images to Microsoft word documents.
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Portable Document Format, also known as a PDF, is a universal file format. .pdf files preserve and embed fonts, images, layouts, and graphics of any source document, regardless of the application used to create the file. Depending on the settings used to save the file, .pdfs can be relatively small files that are easy to share.
PDF files can be shared, viewed, and printed by anyone with the free Adobe Reader software. With software such as InDesign or Adobe Acrobat Pro, you can create a fillable form to make document collection and storage faster and more environmentally friendly.
Adobe Acrobat, Apple Preview, and most browsers.
Portable Network Graphic files, or PNG files, are bitmap images. They use lossless data compression, which helps keeps their file sizes small and easy to load. One of the most significant benefits of using a .png file is saving an image with a transparent background.
Nearly all applications can open .png files. No matter if you are creating a word document, uploading a picture to social media, or including a photo in an email, .png is an excellent choice.
Photoshop Documents, or PSD files, format, usually a raster format, contains graphics and photos created in Adobe Photoshop image editing software. Most commonly used by designers and printers. PSD files can only be opened using Photoshop and may be created in layers.
You can open a .psd file using Adobe Photoshop
For Adobe Illustrator files, use the .ai filename extension. Overall you, as a graphic design client, may not have much use for a .ai file. You can only open the document with the Adobe Illustrator program. It is beneficial if you want someone to modify an existing product in the future. It gives you access to the actual design file.
**Vector Graphics are made of paths, not pixels, which means they can be scaled to a larger size and preserve image quality.**
You can open AI files using Adobe Illustrator and other commercial industry printing applications.
