Tiff is a “non-lossy” format that we recommend to artists for best archive quality. The file sizes for tiff files are larger and some publishing systems demand JPG format. JPG is a “lossy” format but in high resolution it is very good. AP and other photo services use JPG.

CMYK is for four color process printing. We encourage our artists who use black lines and who color their cartoons on a computer to prepare their images as CMYK, with the lines on the K layer. If the original cartoon is RGB, selecting CMYK will not improve the image; take care not to download an RGB image and convert it to CMYK because the separate channel for black lines will be lost and the lines will consist of CMY and K, rather than just being on the K channel. The CMYK download option may save a conversion step if converting to CMYK is a required step in your process.

RGB is intended for the Web, but photo services and many artists upload their cartoons as RGB because it is supported by their scanners when scanning original color artwork or because the file sizes of RGB images are smaller.

The resolution of the high resolution images for print is shown in pixels and in inches, at the size that the artist has chosen. We encourage artists to save their files at 4,000 pixels wide, 500 dpi (e.g. “dots per inch” or more correctly, PPI; e.g. “pixels per inch”). This allows enough resolution to blow the images up as full page illustrations, with high quality printing.

RGB is always used for images online. CMYK is only for four color printing.

The standard DPI for the Web is 72. The pixel widths for the images correspond to the “breakpoints” for sizing images in dynamic displays for different sized screens or windows. Your publishing system may require you to load the image in these different sizes. The largest size is for 4K video displays and retina displays. (The measure for inches is not important for digital usage, but we have included it because editors often think there is an error when they see an image that is very large in terms of inches.)

Most clients prefer JPG format for the web. Your publishing system may prefer PNG format. Both formats are “lossy” but the quality of our images are very good in both formats.

If the artist has prepared a special grayscale (BW) version of his color cartoon, this will be available to download in original format on the image preview page. We recommend that you use this image, rather than converting the color image to BW, because the artist has worked hard to make the artwork look best in BW.