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Format Extension	File Format	MultiPage/ Color-Gray Support	Compression Options	Advantages	Disadvantages
TIF	Tagged Image File Format (TIFF)	Yes/Yes	CCITT Group 4 CCITT Group 3 Modified Group 3 JBIG Enhanced JBIG JPEG Packbits ZIP WANG JPEG None	Handles black-and-white, grayscale, and color images well. Supports multiple images per file. Works across multiple platforms. Available in most commercial imaging applications. TIF with JBIG compression provides the best binary and grayscale file compression. TIFF with JPEG compression provides excellent color file compression.	So flexible that many implementations are not complete, so TIFF files from one application may not be compatible with another application's implementation. Format also allows for private, undisclosed data field formats making certain implementations closed to other applications.
TIF	Plexus TIFF	No/Yes	CCITT Group 4 CCITT Group 3 Modified Group 3 Packbits None	Compatibility with Plexus imaging systems.	Only support a subset of the regular TIFF features.
PCX	ZSoft PC Paintbrush	No/Yes	RLE	Widely supported on PC platforms. Supports black-and-white, grayscale, palette color and 24-bit color images. Reasonably efficient storage of images with large areas of constarnt tone. Images are always compressed using run-length encoding.	Run-length encoding is inefficient for storing typical scanned images. Produces files twice the size of TIFF packbits. Generally not supported on non-PC platforms.
DCX	ZSoft PC Paintbrush FAX extension	Yes/No	RLE	Same as PCX but black-and-white only. Supports multiple images per file.	Same as PCX
BMP	Microsoft Windows Bitmap	No/Yes	None RLE for some color formats	Wide support under Microsoft Windows. Handles black-and-white, grayscale, palette color and 24-bit color images.	Poor support outside of Windows. Poor support of compressed files. Does not support multiple images per file.
JBG	JBIG	No/Gray	JBIG Enhanced JBIG	Excellent binary and grayscale compression.	No support for color. Not widely supported at this time.
JPG	JPEG JIFF	No/Yes	JPEG	By far the best compression for photographic images.	Many incompatible implementations. Lossy, meaning that color and image data is discarded to save storage space at the expense of image qualities that typically are below the threshold of human vision.
PDA	Calera Processed Document Architecture	No/No	CCITT Group 4 CCITT Group 3 None	Single file format can contain bitmap image data or text. Very good compression is possible.	Very little support other than Caere applications (WordScan, M/Series Professional). No color support. (Developed for OCR applications.)
PDF	Portable Document Format (Adobe Acrobat)	Yes/Yes	CCITT Group 4 CCITT Group 3 ZIP	Compatibility with Adobe Acrobat.	Different types of the PDF files can be easily confused.
PNG	Portable Network Graphics	No/Yes	ZIP	May become a replacement for GIF as the standard web graphics format. Superior to GIF because it also supports binary and 24-bit color.	Not widely supported at this time.
MDA	IBM MO:DCA	Yes/Yes	CCITT Group 4 JPEG None	Compatibility with IBM imaging systems.

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