tiff is darker than jpg

[ayersart]

I am saving a brochure to a 300dpi tiff for printing, and i saved it as a 300dpi jpg as well. Why is my tiff file so much darker than the jpg? They are both saved in cmyk. Which should I use?

 

[jimoblak]

From Illustrator, you rarely should be saving any bitmap format for printing. You should save as EPS or PDF formats, which retain this vector data. Saving as TIFF or JPG rasterizes all the vector artwork. That's not good.

The reason why you may see one format darker than the other is if one of them has an embedded color profile.

 

[ayersart]

Well I created it in illustrator, however when I'm going to send the file they don't accept files larger than 20mb, and the only way to get it down to that is to save as a tiff.

Will it make a difference on the press if one of them has an embedded color profile? How can I check to see if they do?

 

[jimoblak]

There are few instances where vector art is larger than print resolution bitmap art. Is a PDF file of your art saved to 300 ppi really larger than 20 MB?