Image File Formats
Image File Formats
• Is a file format for a digital image.
• There are many formats that can be used, such as
JPEG, PNG, and GIF.
• Most formats up until 2022 were for storing 2D
images, not 3D ones.
• Image files are composed of digital data in one of
these formats so that the data can be displayed on a
digital (computer) display or printed out using a
printer.
The most common formats
1. JPEG – JPEG or Joint Photographic Experts Group is the
most popular image format used on the web.
- JPEG files are very ‘lossy’ files where much information about the
image is lost form the original state to keep the image file size small.
- JPEG files are used mostly by photographers, artist, graphics
designers, medical imaging specialist, art historians, and other
groups because image quality and color fidelity is important in
the field.
2. GIF – GIF or Graphics Interchange Format is limited to the
8-bit palette with only 256 colors.
- This format was popularized in the 1980s as an efficient means to
transmit images across data networks and in web since it uses the basic
form for file compression.
- GIF is best used for diagrams, cartoons, and logos which use few colors
and is the chosen format for animation.
The most common formats
3. BMP – BMP or Windows Bitmap file is the image used in
the Microsoft Windows operating system.
- It is an uncompressed file and is made up of millions of dots called
‘pixel’, with different colors and arrangements.
- BMP file is not usually used on the web since it takes up a big space
in the memory and does not scale well.
4. TIFF – TIFF or Tagged Image File Formats is a file format
created originally by Aldus Corporation for desktop
publishing.
- TIFF is supported by many imaging programs and is a good format for
graphic storage, processing and printing.
- TIFF is considered as a high- quality image format, where all color and
data information are stored.
- However, it produces a very large file size and takes huge disk
consumption.
The most common formats
5. PNG – PNG or Portable Network Graphics is an image
format developed by a group of graphic software
developers as a nonproprietary alternative to the GIF
format.
- This format supports full-color images and used for photographic
images.
- However, the resulting file is much larger than with lossy JPEG
compression.
- PNG does best with art text and logos.
