Wednesday, 3 April 2013

JPEG, PNG, GIF, TIFF - ABOUT IMAGE FORMATS



JPEG

JPEG – Joint Photographic Experts Group, most popular image format which is used for photographs and other images on Web. In this format, images can be compressed to greater extent without compromising the quality of the image (remember, do not compress to greater extent which may lead to loss of quality). It uses the method of “Lossy Compression” and in this method, it removes the colors which are not visible to human perception. Thus, resulting image appears similar to the original image even after the compression process. JPEG does not fit for images which consists of text and solid blocks. Since, the text, fine lines and block gets blurred during the compression process and results as a low quality image.



GIF

GIF – Graphical Interchange Format. It is suitable for small images with less colors. It produces the best result upon compression, when the image is small and consists of few colors  (less than or equal to 256 colors) since the quality of the image is not lost during compression.  Logos, diagrams, graphics and other images which have relatively few colors can be stored in GIF format.



TIFF

TIFF – Tagged Image File Format. It is a raster based file format for digital images. It has become the standard for graphics with color depth of 32 bit and can be used for image manipulation. TIFF can be converted to any of the image formats such as BMP, JPEG, GIF and so on. It provides high quality images with minute details upon conversion.


PNG

PNG – Portable Network Graphics. This image format is majorly used in Web. It is the superior version of GIF. Original image quality is not lost during image compression. It supports  maximum of 256 colours and its file size is smaller when compared to that of GIF format. Details are maintained effectively in PNG and it allows 8 bit transparency.




On the whole, every image format has its own quality in terms of appearance and clarity. Each format serves for different purposes. To summarize, JPEG and PNG are the standard formats for web. TIFF images highly support conversion to any image format. While, GIF acts as a good platform for small images with less colours.


 




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