JPG, GIF, TIFF, PNG, BMP…. Why the Hell are there so many different File extensions and when should each of them be used? Believe it or not the choices of what type and when to use them are way simpler than one would think. Sorry not every file type isn’t featured in this Blog, but I feel like these are the most important and most used.

The biggest reason for the plethora of file types is the need for compression. Image files can get ridiculously large, especially when doing photo-manipulation in programs like Photoshop or Glitching the code of an image. Larger file types mean more disk usage and slower downloads. Some files can cross about any platform, but the majority of times, there is a ‘Correct Choice’ when picking image file types.

Programs exist to compress these files for quicker access to the image. The compression of an image can be either lossy or lossless. The file type can also differ depending on the amount of colors they contain.

Lossless Compression

A lossless compression algorithm will try to discard zero information. It will hold the most information to make the Image as sharp as possible. All lossless compression is based on the idea of breaking a file into a “smaller” form for transmission or storage and then putting it back together on the other end so it can be used again.

Lossy Compresson

Lossy algorithms however, will compromise quality to look create a smaller image. The programs will eliminate “unnecessary” bits of information, tailoring the file so that it is smaller. Lossy compression compromises resolution, but makes images way faster to load. And most of the time the human eye can’t even tell a difference.

Number of colors

Obviously a real important part of image compression is the numbers of colors in them. The simplest images may contain only two colors, such as black and white, and will need only 1 bit to represent each pixel. Moving up in 2’s from there. Being on a computer, the color scale is basic RGB (Red, Blue, and Green) and obviously the higher the color, the better the picture.

Types of Files

JPG’s are optimized for photograph images that contain a shit load of colors. It has the best compression ratios even while maintaining very high image quality. It takes the image and tries to discard the information it thinks the human eye wouldn’t notice. And most of the time, it does a damn good job. Photoshop and other high end photo editing programs will allow one to view the image quality and file size as a function of compression level, so that one is able choose the balance between quality and file size. JPG files are used online a lot because of their incredible compression without sacrificing too much quality.

TIFF’s are very flexible format that can be lossless or lossy. Tiff also gives the option of interleaving the file, which a technique for improving the speed of access to blocks on disk storage. In practice, TIFF is used almost exclusively as a lossless image storage format that uses no compression at all. Consequently, file sizes are quite big. TIFF is great for working storage format as you edit and manipulate digital images, especially in Glitching and Datamoshing images., with out having to go through several load, edit, save cycles with JPG storage, as the degradation accumulates with each new save. Also usually the best quality output from a digital camera. TIFF images wont show up in most browsers.

GIF, The ol’ Graphics Interchange Format… supposed to be pronounce like “jif”, as in the peanut butter, but never will be because that’s a stupid pronunciation, it’s “gif”. GIF’s create a table of up to 256 colors from a pool of 16 million. If the image has fewer than 256 colors, GIF can render the image exactly. When saving GIF’s, the amount of compression options are immense and very helpful. They, like PNG, can be saved with transparencies. GIFs are pretty shitty for quality, but the beauty comes in with all the cool things you can do with GIF’s. Most commonly known is the animation capabilities, that can be created in Photoshop by sequencing images one after another to make a video.

PNG is also a lossless storage format. However, in contrast with common TIFF usage, it looks for patterns in the image that it can use to compress file size, similar to the JPG algorithm. PNG is like the big brother to the GIF, bigger, stronger, and out of puberty. It produces smaller files, allows more colors, and is great for web use. Although it cannot support multiple image animations like GIF’s, PNG also supports partial transparency, which is badass. Partial transparency can be used for tons of cool shit on the web.

BMP is an uncompressed proprietary format invented by Microsoft. There is really no reason to ever use this format, unless you are Glitching. The lack of compression of this image makes for easy reading and manipulating images. It is the easiest file for newb’s to start with.

Hope this could be helpful to a few, or many.