TIFF vs SVG – which to use

[Robby Poole]

I am working on a book that hopefully will be published soon. The book will have hundreds of music graphics. The music software can export graphics as PDFs, TIFFS, PNGs, and SVGs. 

Publisher was crashing often about halfway through the book when I used PDF as the graphic format. It was suggested I move the graphic to TIFF format, which I did. But I am wondering about using SVG.

Ultimately, I will export the file as PDF for printing. As such, is there really a difference between using SVG vs. TIFF?

 

Thanks in advance,

Robby 

[Old Bruce]

Personally I would go with TIFFs.

[MikeTO]

SVG was created for websites, not for printing. EPS is the analogous printing format. SVG and EPS are vector formats. Vector images can be scaled without loss of quality because they are stored as X/Y coordinates, lines, and curves.

TIFF, PNG, and JPG are raster formats, stored as a series of pixels. They need to be created at the appropriate size for printing or you'll see jaggy edges (too low resolution) or created huge files for no purpose (too high of resolution).

PDF is a document format, intended for an entire page and not a graphic embedded into a page. A PDF can include raster and vector graphics.

Publisher can import all of these but importing hundreds of tiny PDF lines of music into a Publisher document adds a great deal of overhead because each of those lines of music is a complete document. That's why we previously recommended you use a different format.

EPS is actually the ideal format for what you're doing (music scores can easily be defined as lines and curves) but as you were having technical issues I recommended TIFF because it's the simplest format and will give you great quality as long as you pick the right resolution for printing - your printer can advise the resolution to use.

One reason to avoid EPS is that like PDF it can include fonts. If you have text in your music scores with you almost certainly do, using TIFF will convert that text to pixels. But if you export the music as EPS the fonts may be embedded. Publisher should be able to handle importing 500 music score EPS files each with embedded fonts, after all, they're the same fonts over and over again, but why stress out the application if you're already having problems? Linked TIFF files will just work without issues.

[Robby Poole]

Thanks for that thorough answer! I only ask because using TIFF has been working very well so far. However, there are a few side music graphics I have had to export to SVG open up in Designer, make necessary edits, save as TIFF after edits made, import new TIFFs into Publisher. A lot of work. And currently publisher seems to crash 70% of the time when doing the import stage. 

I am currently testing this on the latest beta version, and while it handles things exponentially better, there are still issues where the program crashes. I was hoping SVG would be an easy solution, as I do worry about appropriate resolution (currently using 600 dpi, but unsure if this is enough). Also editing the occasional example as above, has become time consuming. 

I appreciate the answer. I will stick with TIFF format for now, unless there is a better/easier method for what I am doing.

 

Thank you,

Robby

[Robby Poole]

Thank you for your answer as well. Your thoughts are along some of the thoughts I was having. Not having a lot of experience in this setting, I am looking for as much information as I can find. 

To be honest, I have found very little explanation as to why one format is truly better than another. TIFF is lossless, but so is SVG. So I have been very confused as to why one would be best for print, versus another. I understand that SVG was created for web applications mostly. But from what I can tell, it seems that SVG might have moved into other roles and perhaps beings repurposed for other things. I am unsure, as I have said. All I can find is "TIFF is best for print" with no real reasoning behind. A few answers above is the MOST information I have seen regarding why TIFF might be better.

I appreciate everyone's input.

Robby

[Old Bruce]

5 minutes ago, Robby Poole said:

I have found very little explanation as to why one format is truly better than another.

I comes down to the saying "Horses for courses". If I were working on a document which may be turned into a web graphic, I would not use EPS for any of the graphics in it. EPS is an ancient format originally for the Printing Trade, PDF is better because of support of transparency and so on. TIFF was suggested by me  simply because your term "music graphics". I have to assume that you  were meaning notes on staves. PDF and SVG and EPS all have support for fonts which the notes and the staves are. So why not use one of those? Because fonts for music are extremely difficult to work with. I have had a lot of trouble with them over the years/decades. If the "music graphics" are for illustrative purposes then a high dpi/ppi TIFF will do an admirable job, I guess PNG would do as well. JPEG I would never use for anything with text, no matter the resolution, too many compression artifacts.

You can read about this stuff but actually doing things is going to be better, you will find that EPS, followed by SVG will give you more grief than PDF. You have to experience the problems but you don't need to know the exact causes, they will be arcane in a lot of times.

Having said that I should point out that not all files within a format are going to be the 'same', a lot depends on where (and how and why) they were generated. For example some applications will export TIFFs that only work well in two out of ten other graphic applications. Poor coding for the export engine coupled with bog standard importing.

[Robby Poole]

I greatly appreciate all of these answers. @Old Bruce, your point about TIFFs not working well in all applications is something I sort of experienced in the past (about 2 decades ago if memory serves), and I don't quite remember all of the ins and outs..... but I do remember thinking at the time "TIFF must be a substandard format". At no point did I ever think that perhaps it was the application itself that had the issues. That could be the where some of my hesitation or confusion comes from. And that is an excellent point, that I should and will recognize. 

 

@BofG, you are correct..... the final output will be to PDF. The issue that keeps arising is that Publisher keeps crashing (using PDF for each music example, using picture frames with TIFFS, and now with the SVG). Even the on the latest beta. I have sent files in the past, and have heard nothing about what might be the issue. Is it my file? Is it the application? Is it a faulty font? Is it a faulty music example graphic? I am going to leave a mention over in the beta software forums as well.

 

I do appreciate all of the insight. Right now, they all seem to be giving me issues. So I need to figure some other things out. But perhaps in the future, a lot of these answers will make a lot more sense the more I do work with publisher and other books I see on the horizon.

 

Thank you,

Robby

[Fixx]

TIFF is not going to give best quality if end product is printed matter. If end product is meant to be used as digital only, it does not matter, TIFF is good as long as resolution is right (we use about 140 dpi in our online products). This assuming the graphics are notations etc black&white graphics. You can shave a few megabytes using greyscale images instead of RGB.

Normally I would export PDF from music app, open that in Designer and copy paste items to Publisher (if items are smallish). If they are larger (page size) I would check them in Designer and import either as Designer of PDF files o Publisher. It is though known that Affinity has had problems with PDFs produced from certain notation apps.

[Robby Poole]

@Fixx, thanks for your reply. This book will be printed, and I do need the best quality possible. The graphics are Back and White, and I am trying to use greyscale vs RGB.

I am using Dorico as the music notation app. I have tried PDFs, TIFFs, SVGs, and PNGs. I was warned to stay away from PNGs. But all of the others work well in small documents for sure (no crashing). BofG's point to SVG being better, makes sense to me. When I export, the graphic will be "baked" into the file as part of the PDF structure and will no longer be a standalone file.

The PDF files I was using were fabulous for the first half of the book. They were easy, the correct size, looked amazing, etc. After about 400 PDF graphics of music, Publisher kept crashing. It was stated to me by someone that Publisher tries to give you control over the PDF, and that perhaps I was hitting a roadblock with all of the effort trying to give me control over so many PDFs. That is when someone suggested TIFFs with picture frames. 

I will investigate more what you are saying. There is a good chance another book will be done by me, and I need to figure something out.

 

Thanks,

Robby

[Robby Poole]

OK,

Just to understand the thought here..... 

I export the line of music as a PDF, then open Designer, and place the PDF on a blank canvas. Open Publisher. In Designer, I select the line of music and "copy" from the Edit menu. Go back to Publisher, edit menu paste. Is this correct?

And if so, what is the difference between this and using an SVG?

I am sorry to ask such questions..... but I am somewhat a newbie at a lot of this. 2 decades ago I knew a lot more about file types, and how to achieve certain things. But not taking this line of work up as a full time profession I haven't followed much and therefore know very little.

Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions!

Robby

[Robby Poole]

OK..... I will give this a try!

 

Thank you!

Robby

[MikeTO]

On 7/27/2021 at 2:48 AM, Fixx said:

TIFF is not going to give best quality if end product is printed matter.

With respect, I disagree. You can achieve identical quality for print as long as you know the resolution you're printing at and generate the TIFF images at the right size so that they can be used in Publisher without the need to scale them.

I agree that using a vector format is generally preferable because it offers flexibility and reduced file sizes but he was experiencing repeated crashes with importing hundreds of PDFs.

[Fixx]

18 hours ago, MikeTO said:

With respect, I disagree. You can achieve identical quality for print as long as you know the resolution you're printing at and generate the TIFF images at the right size so that they can be used in Publisher without the need to scale them.

 

I is just too easy to get Publisher to halftone the image if you use greyscale, RGB or CMYK image. Halftoning will make edges look soft. I have heard it is possible to make Publisher honour sharp edges without halftoning but it looks risky technique. In adobeland using 1-bit TIFF would solve this problem but Publisher does not support 1-bit graphics.