When I render to a file, what format should I save as...BMP, RGB, JPEG or? Assuming that I will take that image to an image editor such as Photoshop to compress or edit for web, or what have you. In otherwords wich file format will give the truest of quality. Thanks

IF you are looking for a maximum quality, use uncompressed format (BMP or even better TIFF wich is a common standard for industrial printing). But the size of the pictures files are huge. If you want to publish on the web, you have to compress your pictures. The most common formats are GIF and JPEG. Gif has little poor quality but is enough to the most common WEB purposes. The best is to use JPEG. But during the compression you will lose information (this is a so called destructive compression). You can set the quality of compression when saving your picture directly from VUE. 70% is a good ration between size and quality for web publishing...

Thanks. Eventually I will compress the images (photographs) for web publishing to jpegs. Not for printing at all. Is TIFFs still adviceable though?

Tiff's or tagged image file format is a lossless format and so will not lose any image information when you move from one program to another. Jpeg or Joint photographic experts group, is a lossy format and will lose some detail as you compress it. However as Pmermino said you can alter the compression depending on the size vs quality you require. If you want the best quality, I'd save renders as .tif then import to photoshop or whatever and convert to .jpg Don't forget that each time you save a jpeg it looses more information until the compression artifacts are quite visible, so try to make the conversion to jpeg the last process. Having said all that, I agree with Pmermino that 70% jpeg is quite OK for the web.

Just a small addition. Yep, for best results, BMP or TIFF. Even at minimum compression (maximum quality with virtually no discernible quality drop) JPG will give quite a substantial saving in file size, if that is important. Do remember though that JPG compression is multiplicative. What I mean by that is that if you save a JPG at 70% quality, then open it for editing postwork and save it again at 70% quality, you will further downgrade the final quality to 70% of 70% - i.e. 64%, and this degradation will continue to accumulate each time you save the file. So I normally do all my editing using a lossless format like BMP or PSP, only converting to JPG when I'm sure I have the final version ready for the web. When setting the compression level, it's useful if you can preview the results so you can create an optimum balance between file size and quality of output. Paint Shop Pro, Fireworks and doubtless many others, do offer this facility, or failing that you can download utilities from the web to do it as a separate process.

When would you use RGB as a save as method though? Does it give you richer colors say for compressing to monitor viewing rather than printing?

RGB - Red Green Blue - is a color space not a save format. It has no difference when viewing on a monitor. It is different to CMYK when used in printing, but even then it's typically used in commercial stuff, not your average inkjet. A normal computer monitor should be quite capable of showing the full gamut of the RGB space as it is of CMYK, or indeed the color spaces of PAL or NTSC.

Just checking out the latest messages and noticed an error in my last post. For 64% (which you may find a mysterious figure, as it was unintentionally based on 80%, not 70% quality), please read 49%. (Slaps wrist.)