When creating a website the visual appearance is essential. This good-looking appearance can be achieved by incorporating digital images. But before these images can be successfully imported into the site, they must be stored in the file allowing them to be displayed. So there are two main types of digital image file types – raster(or bitmap) such as PNG, JPEG, and GIF, and vector such as SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics). While vectors are made of mathematical formulas that can scale up or down infinitely without losing their resolution. Which makes them a perfect option for the creation of logos and illustrations. Raster images are best for taking detailed graphics and high-quality photographs from digital cameras. This article will focus on the definition of JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) and its key features.
What is JPEG?
JPEG image format is named after the Joint Photographic Experts Group, which published the first JPEG specification in 1992.
As it was mentioned earlier, JPEG is a file format that is included in text-based computer interfaces and allows visualizing digital images.
To get a better idea of what Jpeg is, it is important to know its advantages and disadvantages.
What are the advantages of JPEG?
Digital cameras commonly use jpeg to store photos since they support approximately 224 or 16,777,216 colors. This makes it a standard file format for photographs and other still images. Jpeg also supports different compression levels, making it ideal for web graphics. Compression is the process of removing some of the data from the original image. In this way, it reduces the file size, while striving to maintain maximum quality.
However, some of the image quality might be lost during the compression process. For this reason, professional digital photographers often capture images in raw format. Then they edit their photos to the highest possible quality, export them as JPEG (.JPG) images, and publish them on the web.
What are the disadvantages of JPEG?
Now that we have analyzed JPEG’s advantages, it is time to take a look at its disadvantages and why on some occasions JPEG might not be the right choice.
Although JPEG reduces file size, in most cases this comes with a compromise in the quality and some color data might be removed. As this color data cannot be changed with editing software, this leaves JPEG photos with limited depth.
Another disadvantage of JPEG files is that they don’t support transparency.
Most images, such as JPEG files, are covered by a certain number of pixels. All of these pixels have a color, even if that color is white. A transparent background has nothing in the background pixels, allowing what’s behind it to show through. Image file formats such as PNG support transparency which allows you to have no background color.
