File Types

 

JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) is a standard image compression mechanism.JPEG file formats are used quite frequently as they are small in size and have good quality which makes them useful as they are usually only a few hundred Kilobytes. JPEG is used for either full colour (24 bit) or grey-scale digital images. To make a JPEG file a small file size you have to throw some of the image data away. So when you enlarge a JPEG image the quality will not be as good. It will be done by the lossy compression approach. This specific image format is mainly for the web applications and it is quite similar to the GIF file, however the only difference is that the JPEG files store all of its colour data and doesn’t need transparency whereas the GIF files don’t store the colour information. An example of high quality JPEG image.

GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) is a bitmap file format which allows you to use up to 8 bits per pixel. The colours are chosen from a 24-bit RGB colour space and supports animation. The GIF file type is mainly used for simple graphics or images such as logos with solid areas of colour. An example of animated GIF image below:

                                                       

TIFF (Tagged Image file Format) is a file format for storing images. This file type is seen more on Apple products and for use by graphics artists and publishers. TIFF is a file type that can be lossless or lossy. TIFF is used mostly without compression and as a lossless image storage format. This has a negative effect on TIFF file types as they usually are quite large e.g. 30,000 Kilobytes. TIFF files are also normally the best quality that you can get from a modern digital camera.

Advantages and Disadvantages of JPEG and GIF Summary

Advantages of JPEG	Disadvantages of JPEG
·         Great format for photographs as it saves at a maximum of 16 million colours ·         Many web browsers support JPEG images	·         JPEG uses lossy compression which means it will lose some detail when converting from other formats e.g. PNG à JPEG

Advantages of GIF	Disadvantages of GIF
·         Uses lossless compression ·         GIF images can use transparency and animation effects ·         An image that has 256 colours or less, GIF is a good format as it will not loose any detail after for example being resized	·         GIF has a 256 colour limit ·         GIF images aren’t suitable for photographs because they often lose quality when saved in .GIF file format due to the limited colour palette