Created by: PrintForFun. Reviewed and updated by the KT Colour team, October 2026.
The short answer: send photos as JPEG at the highest quality setting, straight from the camera roll. Send cards, posters and anything with text as PDF. TIFF is the lossless choice for scans and fine art work. HEIC from an iPhone is fine as it is: our online upload accepts JPG, PNG and HEIC. Whatever the format, the biggest risk to a print is not the file type but a copy that has been shrunk by WhatsApp, Facebook or a screenshot.
Lossy and lossless, in plain words
Every image file is a grid of pixels. A lossless format stores every pixel exactly; a lossy format throws away detail the eye is unlikely to notice so the file is smaller. Lossy is fine for photos at a high quality setting. The problem starts when a photo is saved lossy again and again, or at a low quality setting, because each round discards more. That damage cannot be undone by saving the file as something else afterwards.
JPEG
The standard for photos and the format we receive most. It is lossy, with a quality slider from 0 to 100. A JPEG saved at quality 90 or above from the original is indistinguishable from the original in print. The same photo saved at quality 50 shows blocky patches in skies and skin, and the blocks get bigger with the print. Export at maximum quality, and keep the original rather than re-saving an edited copy over it.
PNG
Lossless, and the only common format that supports a transparent background. It is designed for graphics, logos and screenshots rather than photos. A PNG of a photo is three to five times the size of the JPEG with no visible gain, so it is fine to send but there is no reason to convert a JPEG to PNG. Our online upload accepts PNG.
A PDF locks the layout, the fonts and the page size, so what you designed is what gets printed on any machine. Send a PDF for cards, namecards and certificates, for posters with text, and for anything you made in Canva, Word or InDesign. Export at print quality (Canva calls it "PDF Print"), with fonts embedded and, if the design runs to the edge, 3 mm of bleed.
TIFF
Lossless and large, used by scanners, professional cameras and anyone preparing a fine art print. A TIFF from our film and photo scanning service keeps everything the scanner captured. Our online upload does not take TIFF, so for an online order export a maximum-quality JPEG from it, which loses almost nothing in print, or email the TIFF itself to sales@ktcolour.com.sg.
HEIC, the iPhone format
iPhones save photos as HEIC by default. It is an efficient format that holds the same picture as a JPEG in a smaller file, and it prints just as well. Our online upload accepts HEIC, so you can send iPhone photos exactly as they are.
Some other websites and older computers cannot open HEIC. If you need a JPEG for those, go to Settings > Camera > Formats and choose Most Compatible, which saves new photos as JPEG. For photos you already have, emailing them to yourself or sharing them to most apps converts them to JPEG. There is no quality loss worth worrying about.
The real enemy: shrunken copies
| Where the photo came from | What happens to it |
|---|---|
| Camera roll or camera card | Full size. Always print from here if you can. |
| WhatsApp (sent as a photo) | Resized to about 1600 pixels on the long side and recompressed. Fine for 4R, soft at 8R. Ask the sender to send it as a document, which keeps the original. |
| Facebook or Instagram download | Resized to about 1080 to 2048 pixels and recompressed. Fine for small prints only. |
| Screenshot | Limited to your screen size, often with the interface around it. Avoid for printing. |
| Depends on the app. Choose "Actual size" or "Original" when attaching. |
If you are unsure what you have, our Print Size Calculator reads the file in your browser and tells you the largest size it will print sharp. Nothing is uploaded.
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