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Graphic File formats
File Formats
File formats can be identified by the three (or four) letter extension at the end of the file name.
Every format has its own characteristics, advantages and disadvantages.
The file format mainly used in the newsletter is JPG (sometimes
written as JPEG).
Other formats you may have heard about are BMP and GIF.
JPG format
The JPG format, with its support for 16.7 million colors, is primarily intended for photographic images.
Images in JPG format are smaller in KB's than other formats such as BMP
and TIFF.
JPG allows a photo to be decreased in KB size by decreasing the quality
of the photo. If not taken too far, this decrease in quality is not
visible to the naked eye.
The disadvantage of using JPG is that each time an image is edited it
losses some information and the image quality is degraded. Once that
information is lost, it cannot be regained.
GIF format
Supports only 256 colours.
Allows animation of an image.
Allows transparency in the image.
If the image is compressed, it does not lose information.
Not suitable for photographs but suitable for other graphic images such
as logos.
BMP format
Supports 16.7 million colors so suitable for photographs.
Images in BMP are much larger in size than the equivalent JPG image.
Images can be edited with no loss in quality.
Suitable for storing photographs which may be needed in the future for
editing.
Many graphics programs allow an image to be converted to one of the
above formats.
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