Common Image Formats
If you are going to use images within your website you need to take into account their formats as different types possess various features and work differently. We will consider the most common image formats - GIF, JPEG and PNG.
GIF Image Format
GIF, Graphics Interchange Format, implies the most popular image type used on the web because of small size and fast loading. The advantage of GIF lies in lossless compression which allows reducing the image size without losing its quality. GIF format is also characterized by transparency which means that the picture will look nice being on top of the background image. Using GIF you can also create animations by drawing animation frames with the help of graphic package and then exporting it to a GIF file. The image will be displayed on your web page when you insert the file with IMG tag.
What is considered to be GIF disadvantage is that they support only up to 256 colors and thus won’t be good for photos or other pictures with great variety of colors. But a lot of programs for creating graphics allow you to control the settings while making GIF images, e.g. choose the palette size which varies from 16 to 256 colors depending on the picture you are going to create.
JPEG Image Format
JPEG is known as Joint Photographic Experts Group which has invented the very JPEG format for displaying full-color photo images of small size. The feature that makes JPEG better than GIF lies in the possibility of displaying images up to 16 million colours which makes them great for photographs, illustrations and other high-color images. But there is also a disadvantage which implies that the image loses some details in the process of conversion to JPEG format, e.g. pictures lose sharpness and become blurry. Also JPEG can’t implement animation or transparency, so you will need to use GIF or PNG formats.
PNG Image Format
PNG stands for Portable Network Graphics and is considered to be a novelty in comparison with JPEG or GIF formats. Though it became rather popular nowadays, some browsers still don’t provide complete support for it. PNG exists in two formats: PNG-8 and PNG-24.
PNG-8 is comparable to GIF and holds 8 color information bits. It allows you to compress images making them smaller in size but it can’t be used for animation unlike GIF. PNG-24 is compared to JPEG and characterized by 24 color bits. It compresses true-color images not so effective as JPEG making them larger in sizes, but is lossless and saves all original image information.
The main disadvantage of PNG format use is that early browsers don’t support it and you will need to make use of GIF or JPEG to be sure your website can be viewed properly.
Now as you know about common image formats it is easier for you to decide what images to use within your website and how to manipulate them.
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