The DAM perspective on media formats - Part 2

It can be overwhelming to keep track on which format to use where. To optimize your DAM and make the most out of it, it could be a good idea to look at which formats your organization uses. Here’s the second post in our Media Formats series, enjoy!

The reason for this series of blog posts, is simply because our support often faces questions concerning what file types to use. The simple answer to that is that any file can be uploaded in QBank. The long answer is that some files and formats are better suited to use as originals, an important aspect in the DAM perspective. So, to work with efficient workflows and get the most out of your DAM - consider the following tips.

Part 2 of The DAM Perspective – Media Formats, will focus on Screen vs. Print. 

Screen vs. Print

There is usually some confusion regarding image formats and it seems to stem from the different requirements of screen vs. print use. Most have to do with the size of an image. An image can be one of two kinds; bitmap or vector, where bitmap is the most common one.

• Vector images is infinitely scalable and thusly can be any size
• Bitmaps however, have a set size and scaling it larger will just look blurry

The size is measured in pixels, width and height, where a pixel is the smallest unit of an image representing a single color.

For screen use the size is the only important aspect when regarding how big or small it will be shown on the screen. A full HD image is the size 1920x1080 and a normal camera size is around 5000x3300. That means that an image from a camera fills all normal screen without the need to scale up.

When talking about print another aspect comes into play; DPI or dots per inch. The DPI is the measurement of how many dots the printer will write in an inch. For a digital image a pixel is a dot. A normal target DPI for print is 300 (will look good from a normal viewing distance) but it can vary depending on the intent of the print.

This means that to calculate how large the image will be when the image is printed we divide the size by the DPI. I.e. (5000/300)x(3300/300) pixels = 16.67x11 inches (42.34x27.94 centimeters or the size of an A3 paper). The DPI of an image is the value that translate the pixel dimensions into the image’s physical size when printed.

That's it for now, next post will focus on Streaming vs. Direct play, don't miss it!