More than three decades have passed since Apple introduced the “desktop Publishing System,” kicking off a revolution that put computers in the hands of creative designers instead of the specialised compositors, scanner operators and retouchers that had previously done the production side of origination for print. Over the years since then, a great number of design and production programs have been introduced, flourished and either survive to this day or died off along the way. Each would have its own native file format, with a unique file name extension such as AI, INDD, PSD, QXP. There have also been non-proprietary file formats intended to allow easy interchange between different programs and different production sites – PDF, JPEG and TIFF are the most common.
Keeping up with which format does what, when to use it and how to open it and print it if someone else sends it to you, can be confusing. “Legacy” files in obsolete formats sometimes turn up too, typically from a customer wanting to reprint a book written a couple of decades ago, where the only digital copy is in something obscure.
To help cut the confusion, FESPA has produced this extensive three-part guide to the most common file formats used in design and pre-press for print. It includes all the popular formats throughout the last three decades, many of which are still current. We’ve ignored files that are exclusively used for non-print media, such as web, video, mobile, 3D and virtual reality.
If you’re presented with an unknown file type, read off its file name extension, see if it’s on our chart immediately below this section, and use that to identify the creator program. You can click on the URLs to take you to the description of the creator programs or generic file names, which are listed alphabetically in parts 1, 2 and 3 of this story.

By Simon Eccles