Why do my hires logo files look different from each other?

When we design logos for our clients, we provide the hires files for print use in 4 formats:

1 .ai – Adobe Illustrator file

An .ai file is a special vectorised  image file that allow a print designer to easily scale the logo up or down using vector editing software like Adobe Illustrator

2. .jpg - JPEG file

A .jpg file is an image file compressed using JPEG compression techniques to maintain the quality of the image, mainly used for on screen images.

3. .pdf – Portable Document Format file

A .pdf file is a file created to make it easy to represent two dimensional images on screen. It allows for the accurate transmission and reproduction of two dimensional images

4. .tiff – Tagged Image File Format

A .tiff file is an image file that is uncompressed, containing the highest quality output for print use.

You may not be able to open all these files on your computer as particularly the .ai and .tiff files require specialist software.

You may also notice that the logo may appear slightly differently in the file types. This is because they are created to do different jobs. One of the most common differences is that the .TIFF files look lower quality on a screen than the .jpg files.

Because the .TIFF files contain so much information, your monitor may not be able to handle displaying the image correctly on screen. The colour information stored in the image is based on the specification for print use, not for on screen use, and so you may also see the colours in the .TIFF file appearing oddly on screen. When printed from, the colours in the .TIFF file will be correct.