What You Need to Know About Image Formats and When to Use Them

• PNG-24 has 24-bit color like JPEG
• Contains more than 26 million colors
• Compressed with the Lossless standard, so PNG files are much larger than JPEG

Pros: 

• Compressed with the Lossless standard, so image quality is preserved
• Images have no jagged edges
• Suitable for simple images such as text
• PNG works well on the web for flat color areas and for designing logos and images with transparent or semi-transparent backgrounds
• A PNG can be placed on top of another image and still show on top
• Suitable for posting images on Facebook

=> PNG is the compression format for the best-quality images, suitable for photographers and designers

• Because it has few colors, its file size is much smaller than JPEG
• GIF is simple and automatically recognized by web browsers. It works by creating a series of GIF frames and then combining them to make an animated image.
• Suitable for images and websites with few colors, and for small icons and logos with few colors
• Small image size

Cons

• GIF is not suitable for storing images for later
• GIF has few colors

4. TIFF – Consistent From Start to Finish:
TIFF (Tagged Image Format File), introduced in 1986, is an image format that does not lose data when compressing and saving files. TIFF is a high-quality image format suitable for photo printing and scanning
Pros

• Can be viewed and edited
• Good image quality; often used to save images with complex colors, and often used for scanning
• TIFF works well for printing images that are being edited and need layers, and for high-quality images.

• BMP does not support image compression well
• Easy to create from pixel data stored in computer memory
• BMP is easily translated into a dot format for output devices such as CRT monitors and printers

Which Image Format Should You Choose?
Which image format to choose depends on how you plan to store and use the image. For long-term archiving, you should use TIFF, and PNG is the number 1 choice. On the other hand, you should not use these images for the web, as they can slow down your site’s load speed a lot. So for online use, JPEG is a good choice, even though JPEG does not guarantee image quality. The best way to choose an image file format is to use these formats flexibly: – Save the master copy of the image file in TIFF or PNG format in an original folder. – When you need it for online purposes such as uploading to a website… tasks that require a compact, compressed image file, copy the original image file, save it converted to JPEG, and work on that copy. Combining image file formats flexibly like this makes sharing or using images on the internet quick and easy, while keeping your image archive safe with guaranteed high quality for your original photo library.