All digital artists can rattle off a long list of image file formats PICT, TIFF, JPEG, GIF. There's a time and place for each of them. But only two GIF and JPEG can be reliably displayed on the web (PNG is still up-and-coming). So any web image must be converted into one of these file types.
Image type | GIF | JPEG | PNG |
|---|
Pronunciation | Either "Jiff" or with a hard G, like "give." | Jay-peg. | Ping! |
What it stands for | Graphic Interchange Format. | Joint Photographic Expert Group. | Portable Network Graphic. |
What it's good for | Illustrations and graphics. Also animation. | Photographs. Also graphics with colors that blend or fade. | Everything GIFs do: Graphics, illustrations, animation. |
What it's not good for | Photo-realistic images with colors that blend: They'll appear broken and jagged. | Pictures either graphics or photos with large areas of a single color. | Photographs. |
Colors | 1-bit to 8-bit color (256 colors). | 24-bit only (millions of colors). | 8-bit, 24-bit, or 32-bit color. |
Animation | Yes. | No. | Yes, with MNG. |
Transparency | Yes. A single color can be transparent. | No. | Yes. Plus 256 levels of partial transparency. |
Compression | Lossless. | Lossy. | Lossless. |
File size speed | Images can be reduced to truly tiny file sizes, but compression isn't as good as it could be. | File size tends to be larger than GIFs, but excellent compression almost makes up for it. | Compression is excellent (better than GIF). |
Advantages | | Excellent color retention. Excellent compression allows large images to load quickly. Simple compression process.
| Excellent compression with no loss of quality. Suitable for a wide range of images. Excellent cross-platform viewing.
|
Disadvantages | Complicated optimization process. Certain visual effects (such as glowing light, feathered edges, and vertical stripes of all things compress poorly.
| | Not widely supported. |
