Clip Art can be found all over the web, often for free. Finding Clip art for church use is a little harder than finding it for secular use. There's just more available for secular use.

One of the most common issues that people run into with clip art is the file format. The most common formats used by most people today are: Gif, Jpg, Tif, Wmf, and Eps. Yes, there are other formats, and yes, one of these others may be your favorite, but the ones I've listed are the most common for the purposes we are dealing with.

Gif, Jpg - The Web Formats - Bitmapped
Gif (pronounced jiff - like the peanut butter), and Jpg are bitmapped images. That is the image is basically dots. These two formats are the most commonly used formats on the World Wide Web. There is a new format that is not as common, it is Png. The Png format is not really set in stone yet and is not used very much yet. For that reason I'll leave it out of this discussion.

Gif, the old dog of the web, is the short name for the patented format Graphics Interchange Format. Yes, that is correct, it is patented. Yes, that means someone has the right to charge YOU if you use that format.

The Gif format is a 256 color bitmap. It was designed years ago to display color images on the web. It is limited because of the number of colors it can display, and because the file size is large compared to other formats and in consideration of bandwidth limitations (web surfing speeds). The Gif format has the ability to hide the background, and to show several images in succession (as in animation). Due to it's limitations it is best used for Web pages only, and then for only non-photographic images and small animations (for large/longer animations use Flash, Quicktime, etc).

When using the Gif format for web pages set the DPI to 72. Browsers display graphics at 72 DPI.

Jpg/Jpeg (pronounced jay-peg, and Micro$oft uses the jpe extension - why? - $$$ is the only reason I can figure out) - for web based photographic images AND print. This is a very versatile format. It is so versatile that is it displacing the beloved Tif format in professional graphic design in many instances.

Yes, it is a good format and a good tool for cross platform / cross media design. But being so versatile has drawbacks. Jpeg files render full color images in the millions of colors. They can be RGB, CMYK, and/or compressed. The weakness of the Jpeg is that in amateur hands it can provide unsatisfactory results.

RGB, CMYK, and Compression
Until the past few years the workhorse format of the Graphics Design Industry was the Tif/Tiff (Tagged Image File Format) - enter the Jpeg. Both of these formats support non-dithered full color rendering. Both of these formats contain enough image information in the file to be acceptable for professional printing by the industry. But that is where the Jpeg leaves the Tif in the dust.

The Jpeg file format can be saved in CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, blacK), or in the RGB (Red, Green, Blue) formats. Furthermore it can be compressed. In practiced hands the Jpeg format can give great results in print and on the web. In unpracticed hands, it can be the source of endless frustration.

For the web the format should be RGB at 72 DPI. This is because the images that your monitor displays are displayed using three colors of light Red, Green, and Blue (and hence RGB). I have seen graphics created at 75 dpi, and 96 DPI. I suppose that because some low-end graphics programs were written to make images at 75 DPI that some people never take time to convert the image to 72 DPI. If you are running any version of M$ windows your screen is displaying the 'Windows' GUI at 96 DPI. Web pages are displayed at 72 DPI.

The Jpeg format can be compressed and smoothed. This is both a boon and a bane. It is a boon for the web, and a bane if the image creator goes to print with a compressed image only to get back a product with little blurry sections and loss of detail. Compression decreases the final size of the file in bytes. In other words the file takes less disk space. This is a problem for printing where no compression and no smoothing should be used. Proper compressing of an image for the web is usually a process of trial and error. There are programs that will give you optimum results based on the parameters that you select. The way the image is compressed is by "throwing away" image detail. In general, select the most compression so that the image pleases your eye and doesn't look ugly (smoothing will tend to blur the image so use it sparingly).

For print you need to out put your images as either Grayscale or as CMYK depending on how it will be printed. If you are printing the image with a single color ink, you need to convert it to Grayscale (shades or Black). If you are having the job printed in full color (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, blacK) then output it as CMYK. The resolution (DPI) depends on the final printed resolution (printing resolution is spoken of as LPI - Lines Per Inch). If you are outputting to a laser printer to have a print shop print from you will want to set the image resolution to at least 150 DPI and then output from the laser printer at between 70 and 85 LPI (depending on the paper and resolution of the laser printer). If the job is to be output from an image setter to PMT the image resolution should be at least 150 DPI and the PMT should be output at between 85 and 120 LPI (depending on what your print shop wants). If you are printing from metal plates or for full-color print jobs the image resolution should be set at 300 DPI and the image should be output at 120-150 LPI depending on what your print shop wants. NEVER compress a Jpeg that is to be used for Printing - set compression to 0 and smoothing to 0!!!

Tif - the standard for Printing.

The Tif format is similar to the Jpeg format in that is able to handle CMYK and Grayscale. Tifs are also bitmapped images. They are used primarily for printing. Most older clipart CDroms had the images on them as Tifs (or as a container format holding a Tif as in EPS and WMF). When using the Tif for printed products follow the same parameters as when using the Jpeg for printed products.

Vector Formats - EPS, and WMF

A vector format differs from a bitmapped format in that it does not draw the image with dots but by describing the outline of areas of the drawing with vector based coordinates and then describing how that area is filled. The power with these formats is two-fold: first - the image outputs at the highest resolution of the output device, second - the image can be scaled without loss of quality (it won't get the jiggy jaggies like a bitmap when scaled up).

There are actually many "vector" formats which include: CDR, EPS, WMF, AI, DXF, DWG, etc.

Some of these formats are specific to the program that the drawing was created with. CDR is the Corel Draw Format, AI is the Adobe Illustrator format, DWG is the native format for AutoCAD, DXF is a cross platform format for CAD drawings (another for CAD is IGS).

In the last section I mentioned "container formats". That is a term that I may have made up to describe the subset of formats that includes EPS, WMF and the native formats of Corel Draw, Adobe illustrator and the like. These formats are capable of not only creating an image but of containing other images inside them (both bitmapped and vector).

Programs that are written to create these container images are called Illustration programs by the graphics industry. This subfamily of vector based programs includes Corel Draw, Adobe Illustrator, Macromedia Freehand, etc.

These programs can be used to layout printed documents, book covers etc. The image to the right was created with an illustration program. I use Corel Draw to create almost all of my clipart.