TIFF vs SVG – which to use

[ArthurLawrence]

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 

[firstdefence]

Welcome to the forum @ArthurLawrence

Which app are you exporting the music graphics from?

One of the most noticeable features would be the overall file size of the exported graphics, TIFF files will be a larger file size than SVG, but TIFF is a lossless format uncompressed and used in publishing because of the quality, SVG is more for web use and uses compression to get the file size down. 

I would export to TIFF and SVG and compare the results, I dare bet a publisher would tell you to use TIFF.

[Wosven]

Like @firstdefence
said, I would test also. Tiff is raster  image —in some app only the preview is used for display and real data like vectors are used for exporting the file—, so a tiff preview in APub could be lighter that a full vector format like SVG.

But in the past I had a project with only vectors and text and APub was terribly slow (and it keep on on my computer with 350 pages book of text with few images...)

[BofG]

51 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

SVG is more for web use and uses compression to get the file size down. 

Not natively. If you use it as a container for an already lossy compressed image then I guess technically you could say that at a stretch. In and of itself SVG is a vector format, SVGZ allows for lossless compression of that.

To the OP - can you post an example file in both TIFF and SVG? The format isn't the only factor - it's equally possible with both for the exporting program to either do a good job or a bad one.

[iconoclast]

The most important difference between TIFF and SVG is that TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) is a pixel image file format and SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) a vector graphics format. So tiff- images consist of pixels while svg consist of vector data. TIFF strength is the high colour-reliability, it supports colour profiles in a verry sophisticated way. The strength of SVGs is that they can be scaled without a loss of quality - edges will always stay sharp.

For areal and linear graphics I would recommend SVG. I made good experiences with it in Publisher so far. For photos and paintings TIFFs would be the best choice.

Edit: SVG isn't reaally made for web. The Internet Explorer didn't support it until lately.

[Fixx]

If "music graphics" is notation images ♫ I would prefer to stay with vector graphics. Pixel images (excluding 1-bit graphics) tend to print halftoned which may be fuzzier when printed than pixel images.

[lacerto]

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[BofG]

52 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

Depending on the print production, using SVG (which does not support CMYK) can become problematic

I don't think it "survives" export to PDF though. If I take a colour TIFF and a colour svg and place both into a Greyscale D50 document they both show as grey. Export to a PDF with a full colour profile and the TIFF retains it's full original colours whilst the SVG is grey still - opening the PDF in Designer shows an image layer for the TIFF and native paths for what was the embedded SVG document.

[lacerto]

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[BofG]

15 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

Sorry, I probably failed to understand what you mean.

It's just me not explaining well. A placed svg doesn't remain an svg when the document is exported to PDF. The resultant PDF simply has the vectors in it natively, so they are under the PDFs colour management. The SVG file is eliminated complelely. At least this is what happens from Designer, maybe publisher is different.

[lacerto]

(...)

[BofG]

57 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

then vector graphics becomes CMYK (and RGB black becomes four-color black)

I understand what you meant now, sorry I'm slow . I was thinking that because the SVG essentially gets removed that the colour issues wouldn't occur as it's all just under the PDF format at that point. I should probably step away from the computer today as my brain is clearly not with me!

[Old Bruce]

Notation Fonts do not play nice with  applications other than the one they were designed for.

I am probably the fellow who suggested TIFFs. I do so knowing that the debate about vectors vs rasters would occur. If my reading of this is correct then this document is going to printed, on paper. Ink on paper is like raster images, it is nothing at all like vectors. The statement "Publisher was crashing often..." is far more important than the ability to scale/zoom in on a vector of a doted half note. 

I do believe that for a printed product high resolution TIFFs of the score will be fine. 

Most important is that the Publisher document gets finished. If the fonts in the SVGs or PDFs are causing crashes then use TIFFs or PNGs, just not JPEGs.

Music fonts are right royal pains. They will cause problems.