Whats the best file type to use?

[GenoXV]

:confused: What is the best file type to use?

:confused: What runs smoother and faster?

:eek: jpeg, gif, or png

:confused: What is the benefits or differences in using the 3? In what situations should I use the right file type?

:o If you have a link to these questions, that would help to. Thanks for the support.

[symo]

Let Google be your friend... :D

http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Internet/2002/JPG_GIF_PNG.asp
http://www.ou.edu/class/digitalmedia/articles/CompressionMethods_Gif_Jpeg_PNG.html
http://info.eps.surrey.ac.uk/FAQ/standards.html

symo

[Croc Hunter]

For a photo type of image jpg. For an image with only a few colors gif or png.

[Neat Pete]

Croc, that's about it in a nutshell. And GIF files are usually limited to 256 colours, ideal for graphics and diagrams, but photos saved as GIF files look a bit "cartoony". A experienced photographer can spot this a mile off as "not enough colours".

I have read hundreds of pages of documentation on image processing over the last two years, and that's still where it's at. PHP image processing routines and comments, Windows DLL to process images, documentation that comes with image processing programmes - all make the same points over and over. A yes vote that altered the technical facts and the known perceptions of the human eye would mean what????

Most of what we take for granted today about image handling and compressing was academic research papers in the period 1985-1990. Remember that decompressing and showing a jpg file on the screen using a 486/33 takes quite a few seconds and at that time everyone scoffed as jpg was thought far too slow, and those research papers were right on the leading edge, well ahead of the rest of us.

In the last five tears there has been a digital camera revolution. An old auntie has just returned from a boat trip to the Antarctic. When they went ashore to photograph the penguins, she was the only one with film in her camera. It's virtually all JPG files now.

[YvetteKuhns]

For web, photos should be converted to JPG. Some cameras and scanners may save larger, higher quality images as TIFF, but they are much too large for uploading and downloading on the Internet. They are better quality for printing.

GIF has been replaced by PNG to avoid patent infringement. See Wiikipedia for GIF, JPG and PNG information (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_Interchange_Format). I use PNG for image manipulation on the web server while using php and GD or ImageMagick.

People still use GIF for transparencies and animations created with Photoshop and ImageReady. Try creating a gradient to see differences between GIF and JPG. Also, when creating a banner with drop shadow, the GIF looks terrible, but the JPG looks nicer. Of course, when saving for web, you can choose low, medium or high quality. You really see the difference in this case.