You must balance your scientific needs, in terms of file formats and size, with practical considerations in order to make your work go smoothly and without performance and compatibility problems. Mobility and Speed - The larger a file, the longer it will take to load and the more memory on your computer it will consume, especially on older, slower computers. Some file formats are designed for speed of use. Images using compressed file formats load into memory faster because they are smaller and decompression by software is faster than reading a lot of raw data. Storage Limitations - Large files take up more space on your local drive or network file servers.
Storage space is always a valuable commodity on computers.
Large files also take longer to transfer over the network. Always consider the types of computer equipment and programs you will be using with the image when selecting format. File format can also affect how a file appears in final output. Printer driver settings can also affect the output of graphic images. Many of these parameters can be set from within the program that you are using to output the image.