Users must install the free Adobe Acrobat Reader program in order to view PDF documents. PDF files can get extremely large if they house whole documents rather than chapters or individual articles. Viewable in Web browsers, GIF images make small files, partly because of their compression, and partly because they handle only 256 colors. Like GIF, JPEG images are also viewable in Web browsers, but they can handle over 16 million colors. Nevertheless, their extremely efficient compression keeps file size small.
TIFF images come in many flavors, some of which feature compression.
However, TIFFs tend to be on the large side. They too can handle over 16 million colors. CatchWord, the developer of RealPage, supplies an entire system for hosting RealPage documents. If you work with RealPage documents, much of the time you ll be connected to one of CatchWord s servers. RealPage documents tend to be smaller than comparable PDFs.