How to choose the right image file format ?

By: Team (Support)   Posted on: January 3, 2009

There are many image formats available, but only a few work on web. Gif, jpg and png are the main image file formats used for the web. These formats have become the most popular because of their compatibility with modern browsers, broadband speeds, and the needs of average users. The main difference between these files formats is how they are used when designing for the web and the outcome they produce. Let us see one by one

GIF (Graphics Interchange Format)
  • Gif images are suitable for creating very low resolution files for your website.
  • It support transparency, which allows you to place the gif over any color background or even photos, and the visitor won’t see a border or background in the image.
  • We can use less color (1 to 256) format so that the file sizes will come down.
  • Gif files are also compressed, which gives them a small file size.
  • GIF is not lossy like JPG, so suitable for typography and geometric shapes.
  • It supports interlacing, which preloads the graphic in such a way that starts out blurry and becomes focused and crisp when it is finished downloading.
  • It supports simple animation
  • Gif format is not recommended for photos because they are limited to 256 colors.
  • Levels of transparency are limited to either transparent or opaque.
  • Gifs doesn’t support the level of animation that Flash files do
Gif format is mainly used for logos, symbols and graphics with solid areas of color

JPG (Joint Photographic Experts Group)
  • It provides better compression, a typical JPG can be compressed at a ratio of anywhere from 2:1 to as high as 100:1, depending on your settings.
  • Jpeg files can be relatively small in size, but they still look sharp and beautiful
  • It support up to 16.7 million colors, which makes them the right choice for complex images and photographs
  • It supports 'progressive jpeg' technique, which acts as interlacing in GIF format.
  • JPGs support 24-bit RGB and CMYK, as well as 8-bit Grayscale
  • It do not support animation
  • Not recommended for 2-5 color logos and text images
  • It is not lossless, which means that they lose quality during editing.
  • JPG is also not an ideal medium for typography
  • Saving multiple versions of artwork can cause degradation with every save
JPEG is the best way to format your colourful photos.

PNG (Portable Network Graphics)
  • PNG supports 8-bit color like GIF, but also supports 24-bit color RGB, like JPG does
  • It supports transparency (PNG-8 does not support transparency, but PNG-24 and PNG-32 do)
  • It can have different levels of transparency
  • PNG files are lossless, which means that they do not lose quality during editing
  • PNG files tend to be larger than jpegs, because they contain more information, and are lossless.
  • PNG files do not support animation.
  • PNG tends to be the biggest of the three filetypes and isn’t supported by some (usually older) browsers
PNG format be used for creating low-resolution images that load quickly but also look great.24-bit PNG is ideal for screenshot software, allowing pixel for pixel reproduction of the desktop environment.

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