TIFF vs JPG vs PNG: best format for textile printing

The short comparison

	TIFF	JPG	PNG	PSD / PSB
Compression	None, or lossless LZW / ZIP	Lossy	Lossless	Lossless
Re-saving loses quality	No	Yes, a little each time	No	No
Colour modes	RGB, CMYK, grayscale and more	RGB, CMYK, grayscale	RGB, grayscale, indexed (no CMYK)	All Photoshop modes, including Multichannel
Bits per channel	8 or 16 (and more)	8	8 or 16	8, 16 or 32
Layers	Yes in Photoshop (other programs may ignore them)	No	No	Yes
Spot channels	Yes in Photoshop	No	No	Yes
Transparency	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Size limit	4 GB (BigTIFF beyond that)	65,535 px per side	Very large in theory; software limits apply	PSD: 30,000 px per side and 2 GB. PSB: 300,000 px per side

TIFF for print masters

TIFF is a container that can hold pixels uncompressed or with lossless compression. In Photoshop's TIFF options you will see LZW and ZIP. Both shrink the file without changing a single pixel, and LZW, the older of the two, is very widely supported.

Warning: TIFF also has a JPEG compression option. Avoid it for print masters, because it brings back JPG's losses.

TIFF supports RGB and CMYK, 8 and 16 bits per channel, and embedded colour profiles. Photoshop can also save layers and spot channels in a TIFF, with a separate "Layer Compression" setting for the layer data.

Many RIPs and other programs read only the flattened image and skip the layers. For production, send a flattened copy unless your printer asks for layers.

The limit to know is 4 GB. Standard TIFF stores positions inside the file as 32-bit numbers, so it cannot go past 2^32 bytes. BigTIFF removes that limit, but not every RIP opens it, so ask before sending one.

JPG and the re-saving problem

JPG makes small files by throwing away detail the eye notices less, mainly fine colour detail. It works in 8 × 8 pixel blocks. That is why heavily compressed JPGs show faint squares in flat areas and noise around sharp edges, and textile motifs and outlines are made of sharp edges.

The bigger problem in daily work is re-saving. Each time a JPG is opened, edited and saved again, it is compressed again and loses a little more.

A design that has gone designer to client to agent to mill as JPG, edited at each step, can look visibly worse than the first export.

JPG has no layers, no transparency, no spot channels and only 8 bits per channel. It does support CMYK. The maximum is 65,535 pixels on a side, which matters for long saree layouts (see the size table below).

Tip: If your printer accepts JPG, export it once from your master file at the highest quality setting. In Photoshop, that is the top of the quality scale.

PNG and colour mode

PNG is lossless, so saving it again changes nothing. It supports 8 or 16 bits per channel and an alpha channel for transparency, which DTF printing depends on.

The catch for print is colour mode. PNG stores only RGB, grayscale or indexed colour, so it cannot hold CMYK or spot channels.

To save a CMYK design as PNG you first have to convert it to RGB, and the colours you set in CMYK can move. For a printer who works in RGB, PNG is fine.

Note: Our AI image upscaler gives you a PNG tagged 300 DPI, which is lossless and opens almost everywhere. If your printer wants TIFF, open the PNG in Photoshop and save it as TIFF with LZW. No quality is lost on the way.

PSD and PSB

PSD is Photoshop's own format and keeps everything: layers, masks, adjustment layers, spot channels, and Multichannel mode, where each channel is one ink. For screen and rotary work, the separated file with one spot channel per screen is often kept as a PSD.

PSD has two hard limits: 30,000 pixels on any side and 2 GB of data. PSB (Photoshop Large Document Format) raises the side limit to 300,000 pixels. A full saree at 300 DPI is longer than 30,000 pixels, so it needs PSB.

Not every RIP or textile CAD program opens PSB, and some read only the flattened composite of a PSD. Keep the PSD or PSB as your master and export what the printer asks for.

If you need to enlarge a layered or multichannel file, our upscaler also accepts PSD and PSB, including multichannel files with spot channels.

How big the file will be

File size before compression is easy to work out: width in pixels × height in pixels × number of channels × bytes per channel. RGB has 3 channels and CMYK has 4. 8-bit is 1 byte per channel and 16-bit is 2.

The table uses 300 DPI and 1 MB = 1,000,000 bytes.

Job	Pixels at 300 DPI	Megapixels	RGB 8-bit	CMYK 8-bit	RGB 16-bit
Kurti front panel, 20 × 30 in	6,000 × 9,000	54.0	162 MB	216 MB	324 MB
Running fabric repeat, 58 × 40 in	17,400 × 12,000	208.8	626 MB	835 MB	1,253 MB
Dupatta, 44 × 90 in	13,200 × 27,000	356.4	1,069 MB	1,426 MB	2,138 MB
Saree, 44 × 216 in (about 5.5 m)	13,200 × 64,800	855.4	2,566 MB	3,421 MB	5,132 MB

Example: For the running repeat, 58 × 300 = 17,400 px and 40 × 300 = 12,000 px. Then 17,400 × 12,000 = 208.8 million pixels, and × 3 channels = 626 MB.

What this means in practice:

• The saree is 64,800 px long, more than double PSD's 30,000 px limit, so it must be PSB or TIFF. It is just under JPG's 65,535 px limit.
• The saree in 16-bit RGB (5,132 MB) is over TIFF's 4 GB limit (about 4,295 MB) unless compression brings it under.
• LZW and ZIP shrink files with large flat areas a lot and photographic textures much less, so real sizes vary.
• You can check any print size in the fabric DPI calculator. Many printers work below 300 DPI, which makes files much smaller; one UK fabric printer, for example, asks for 180 DPI for fabric.

Format for each job

What printers in India ask for

There is no single rule, and printers differ. As one example, Arunam Digital Prints in Tiruppur lists CDR, AI, PSD, TIFF, PDF, PNG and JPG as accepted. A UK fabric printer asks for JPG, BMP, GIF, TIF or PNG in RGB, up to 200 MB.

Note: Guides online disagree on RGB versus CMYK for digital fabric, which tells you the answer depends on the machine and RIP.

Before sending, ask your printer these four things:

1. Which format: TIFF, PSD, PNG or JPG?
2. RGB or CMYK, and which colour profile?
3. What DPI at the final print size?
4. Flattened, or with layers and spot channels?

Pick by job

Job	Send to printer	Keep as master	Avoid
Digital (inkjet) printing on cotton, rayon, silk	Flattened TIFF with LZW or ZIP, in the colour mode the printer asks for	Layered PSD or PSB	Repeatedly re-saved JPG
Sublimation on polyester	TIFF, or PNG if the printer works in RGB	Layered PSD	CMYK JPG sent to an RGB workflow
DTF or placement prints needing a transparent background	PNG (RGB, transparent) or TIFF with transparency	Layered PSD	JPG (no transparency)
Screen or rotary separation	PSD or PSB with one spot channel per screen, or TIFF with spot channels if the printer's software reads them	Layered PSD or PSB	JPG and PNG (no spot channels)
Full saree or bedsheet at high DPI	TIFF if under 4 GB, otherwise PSB, or split into repeat tiles	PSB	PSD (30,000 px limit)
Showing the client on WhatsApp or email	JPG at high quality, sent as a Document		Using that JPG for production

Common mistakes

• Converting a JPG to TIFF and expecting it to be sharper. The TIFF keeps whatever losses the JPG already had.
• Saving a TIFF with JPEG compression and calling it lossless.
• Converting RGB to CMYK (or back) without asking the printer, which can shift colours twice.
• Sending a layered PSD without checking whether the printer's software reads layers or only the flattened image.
• Sharing print files as WhatsApp photos, which turns them into small JPGs. Send them as Documents. Our guide to blurry WhatsApp designs covers this.

What to do next

Ask your printer the four questions above and save your production file in that format from a layered master.

If the design you have is too small for the print size, upload the TIFF to our Upscale TIFF page or any JPG, PNG or PSD to the AI image upscaler. Enlarge it, then save the result as TIFF with LZW for the print house.