Image File Types

There are basically two ways of saving images, lossy or lossless. If an image is saved in a lossy image format, it means the format being used discards some of the "unimportant" image information. Therefore, the resulting image file is smaller. Lossless retains ALL the image information. These files can be quite large, especially from the newer digital cameras.

Here is an overview of the most common image formats.

JPEG - By far one of the most common image formats. It's primarily used for photographs. It is a lossy type of format, but most people can't really see the difference. You can adjust the amount of compression when saving a JPEG image, so you do have some control over the final output quality. JPEG's are extremely popular since they compress into a small file size and retain excellent image quality.

Keep in mind that the more you compress a JPEG, the more "pixely" it will tend to look. For the best results, save your JPEG's at the "medium" or "high" setting (your imaging software should bring up this option when you go to save as a JPEG). There is little image degradation in most pictures saved at the medium setting.

GIF - Another popular format, especially on the web. It's a lossless format that's ideal for graphics. GIF's can be either static or animated. If you've ever seen a graphic on a web page that was animated, you've seen one of these animated GIF's. Most of the time GIF's are used for non-photographic type images (buttons, borders, etc.).

BMP- This is the standard Windows image format. It's lossless and works well for pictures or graphics. It is an uncompressed file format, so it takes up lots of disk space. It's also the standard format for Windows desktop wallpaper.

PNG (Portable Network Graphic) is a lossless image format, properly pronounced "ping". It was designed to replace the older and simpler GIF format. Like GIF you can make transparent images for buttons and icons, but it does not support animation. A PNG file can generally end up being twice the size of a JPG and three times larger than a GIF and some browsers, such as older versions of Internet Explorer and Netscape, incorrectly render them.

ART- If you are an AOL "netizen" this is the reason your web graphics look bad and only your AOL friends can open the pictures you send them. By default AOL compresses image files and sends them to you as .art files. They claim that this makes pages load faster, but really it is just a way to conserve bandwidth.

~ Tip from http://worldstart.com