Best picture file format (1 Viewer)

[HotShot]

wats the best format for the interent and for general use. I realise that png happens to thave the compression and better quality than gif, but are there any consequences?

 

[sunny]

PNG uses a lossless compression algorithm, so even though its compressed, the picture quality remains the same. JPEG is the most common giving you a good tradeoff between compression and size.

What format you pick will depend on what features you need - if you need to use transparency then obviously you wouldn't use JPEG or BMP.

 

[Krangelus]

PNG has issues with internet explorer where it will not display the transparency correctly.

Browsers like Firefox on the other hand can display PNG's properly.

Microsoft have said they will incorperate proper PNG support in Internet Explorer 7

 

[Adrian.]

GIFs are best if quality doesn't matter and you want a really small file size or you want animated pictures (moving). E.g. the smilies on this forum are GIFs because it doesn't matter if the picture quality isn't perfect and it keeps the file size down.

 

[Rafy]

Whatever you do, just dont use bmp on the internet. They take forever to load beacuse of their large sizes

 

[Assasinator_2]

It all hinges on what you're using it for.

Fine lines without blurring of colours? Gif or PNG. PNG is an evolution of gif - gif only supports 256 colours, wereas PNG has an option for monochrome, 256, or 16 bit (all colours). They're lossless, and as such, do not acutally cause any artifacts in the image.

Artifacts are

the little grey blocks around the text in that image. They're caused by compression.

On the flipside, .jpg files are lossy - they cause artifacts (hence why the above image has them) They're not a problem in photos, and other such images, as often there's a gradual change of colour. You'll be able to notice it if you look closely, though. You can change the compression amount of a .jpg, to reduce filesize, or minimise artifacting. There's also technically a 'lossless jpg' option, but png does a better job of it.

Basically, for black on white text, use gif. For lots of colours, use .jpg. If you need both, use .png. If you really dislike someone, send them a .bmp (in short, NEVER use it for web stuff)

 

[king_of_boredom]

yeah, BMP sucks. i had to learn the hard way.

(uploading a profile picture for 20 minutes only to get an error message).

 

[HotShot]

rite wats the point of microsoft coming up with new format i thnk .raw for their OS?

 

[Krangelus]

There's also technically a 'lossless jpg' option, but png does a better job of it.

Well, technically, there is no such thing as a lossless jpg.

 

[sunny]

JPEG2000, though not directly related to JPEG, is lossless.

 

[jumb]

rite wats the point of microsoft coming up with new format i thnk .raw for their OS?

So that they could try and take over something else.

 

[AsyLum]

JPG/JPEG and PNG for standalone images for me

If i need transperacy, GIF.

 

[Casmira]

PNG supports transperancy doesn't it ?

 

[taco man]

actually PNG does support transparency. And as for what i rekon is the best file format its gotta be PNG, the only thing i could c wrong with it is its browser compatability

 

[flamearrows]

actually PNG does support transparency. And as for what i rekon is the best file format its gotta be PNG, the only thing i could c wrong with it is its browser compatability

With 90% of the internet still using IE, this is reasonably important, wouldn't you say?

To the original poster, I'd just stick with a decent quality jpeg compression. It's difficult to go wrong with, unless you really need fancy features or losless compression.

flamearrows

 

[HotShot]

no actually i think most browsers are compatible with it now and if not they update quite easily, i guess the drawback is animation.