The use of images has become very common in the online world. People see them, send them and post them. Most of the time, this is an easy process, and people can open and view any image file that they want to. However, because of the many different kinds of image file extensions, occasionally you run into trouble.
In some cases, you may need to convert an image file to a different type to view it. In other cases, you will need to convert your own images before you send them, save them or post them. If this is the case, you need to be careful which of the image types you use, because the quality and functionality can be impacted.
We’re going to review some of the more popular image file extensions to help you make the best choice.
Popular Image File Extensions
JPG
This is one of the most popular image extensions and it stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group.
The compression process for a JPG file removes some of the colors from the image that are not visible to the human eye. Because of this, you have to be careful. If you reduce the quality of the JPG image to much, you may not be able to recover some of that lost color information.
People typically use JPGS for pictures of people and photos of products. This is because the color variance is very important in those photos. However, JPGS cannot handle transparency, so you shouldn’t use them if you want people to be able to view the background through the image.
GIF
GIF stands for Graphics Interchange Format. In this type of an image extension, there are a limited number of colors that are used when the image is shown. For example, a digital camera may use thousands of different colors in a picture. But if that picture is converted to a GIF image, there are only 256 colors that can be used.
You shouldn’t use GIF’s for pictures that contain a great deal of color detail, but they work well for items like logos or graphs. They also work well when you need to include transparency components in your image.
PNG
Another of the more popular image file extensions are PNG files. This is a Portable Network Graphic and it was created as a bigger, better version of a GIF file extension. A PNG file does support transparency, has many more colors available and it compresses the size of the file up to 25% better than GIF files. One problem with PNG files is that older browsers sometimes don’t handle some of the more advanced transparency issues very well.
SVG
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) image file extensions have been around for nearly a dozen years, but these image types weren’t used very often. However, with the increased usage of HTML5, SVG files are becoming much more popular. This is because of their ability to create images that are very high in quality and their ability to include animation. SVG files also maintain their level of quality as the size of the image decreases or increases.
While these are some of the more popular image file extensions, it is definitely not an exhaustive list. When you are making the decision to convert your image file, it is important to learn about the options so that your converted image has the ability to do everything you need it to do!
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