Hello. Could someone please explain to me what the difference between Mac and PC byte order is in the tiff saving dialogue box? I use a PC and even if I save a tiff with Mac byte order I can still re-open the tiff. I am curious as I often supply tiff artwork to others when I don't know what their platform is and I am never sure whether or not they can open the tiff if I choose the wrong byte order.
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Tiff Byte Order
- Thread starter dimoj
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PCs and Macs store bytes (not just in TIFFs) in different ways. If you represent a number that's too big to be stored in one byte, it may be split over two or more bytes. A PC will store the lower part of the number first, followed by the higher part, whereas a Mac stores them the other way around.
The different versions of TIFFs optimise their bytes to suit one system or the other. In practice, most software that can read TIFFs can read both types, but obviously saving for your target platform will give some performance benefits. Usually this is negligable, so I wouldn't lose sleep over it unless other software you use can't handle it.
The different versions of TIFFs optimise their bytes to suit one system or the other. In practice, most software that can read TIFFs can read both types, but obviously saving for your target platform will give some performance benefits. Usually this is negligable, so I wouldn't lose sleep over it unless other software you use can't handle it.
askIllustrator
Technical User
Man is Binary and PC's are ASCII. Not really a huge difference but I get in the habit of resaving .tifs once I've inspected them anyway. Stay away from LZW compression though, I don't think thats ever come in handy. I'd buy a Mac if I could afford one.
I've heard that before, but I don't really agree. Binary and ASCII encoding, as far as I'm aware, is to do with PostScript. Saving, say, an EPS file with ASCII encoding is the most compatible way of doing it, because it creates a file that uses one byte per charactor of PostScript code. It's like creating PostScript with a text editor. Because PostScript doesn't really need the full range of ASCII charactors, it can take a shortcut, and encode the file differently -- binary encoding.
Binary is more efficient (try saving an EPS file with both encodings and compare the file sizes), but occasionally (actually, very rarely) some software doesn't handle it correctly. In those instances, sometimes saving it using ASCII encoding can help.
There's no technical reason why ASCII & binary encoding should be dependant on one platform or the other. With TIFFs, however, the byte order is directly related to the way the CPU handles data (big & little endian is the technical term). It's not difficult to interpret files destined for another platform, it's just a little more inefficient.
Binary is more efficient (try saving an EPS file with both encodings and compare the file sizes), but occasionally (actually, very rarely) some software doesn't handle it correctly. In those instances, sometimes saving it using ASCII encoding can help.
There's no technical reason why ASCII & binary encoding should be dependant on one platform or the other. With TIFFs, however, the byte order is directly related to the way the CPU handles data (big & little endian is the technical term). It's not difficult to interpret files destined for another platform, it's just a little more inefficient.
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