Despite being proprietary, it is not uncommon for TIFF files to be used as a high-quality backup of OER (Library of Congress, 2006). TIFF files are often used when scanning documents. Perhaps, in time, SVG will become a recommended format (Zeidner & Gould, 2008). Unfortunately, SVG support in web browsers is uneven, making it difficult to recommend as a format for OER. SVG: An open format with promising new features, including animation. PSD files are great for editing, but are only compatible with Photoshop. PSD: Photoshop Document file (Adobe Systems Incorporated "Photoshop Format"). Growing support for PNG files makes it a good format for OER (W3C, 2003 Microsoft, 2007). However, all current web browsers, such as Internet Explorer and Firefox, will display PNG files. In the past, some browsers did not support PNG that well, so adoption of the format has been slow. PNG: Open format that is similar to TIFF. Because JPEG is so commonly used on the internet, it is often used as the final format for OER (Lane, 1999 Clark 2002). JPEG is considered a 'lossy' format, meaning that if the photo is continually edited, the image quality will be reduced. There are some patent concerns with JPEG, although its committee has stated that they intend for the format to be free to use. JPEG: The most common image format on the internet. Preferred OER formats: FLAC, OGG Vorbis, MP3. Although the format is not open, converting to a WAV file makes sense if you are planning to edit audio, as it is the format of choice for many audio editors (Library of Congress, 2005). WAV files are not 'lossy,' which means they do not lose sound quality as they are edited. Although WAV format is patented it is commonly used and is part of the European Broadcast Union standard. WAV: A proprietary format from Microsoft and IBM. Ogg Vorbis is a lossy format, like MP3, while FLAC is similar to WAV and AIFF (, n.d. OGG Vorbis and FLAC: Open formats that are completely free. Still, there is a large amount of software and hardware designed to use MP3, which may make it a good choice in many situations (BBC News, 2007 Williams, 2007). MP3: Although MP3 is probably the most widely used audio format on the internet, it has had patent issues which have previously made it less than ideal, for OER creation, however those patents have now expired. Like WAV, AIFF is uncompressed and is a good choice for audio editing (Apple Computer, Inc., 1991).
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