JPEG is the reigning king of images. Not only is it the default image format for most digital devices, but it has a major share on the internet and is used constantly in websites. This is because of the format’s ability to offer decent image quality in a smaller file. Despite being loved by digital devices and media, JPEGs have failed to make the same impression on printers.

Printers and JPEG images don’t gel well, which is why you will need an image converter to change your JPEG to PNG, TIFF or other formats. If you haven’t noticed this before, here are the reasons why JPEG isn’t suitable for printing.

Lack of Quality

A JPEG image will look great on your computer screen, but it will appear rough in print. This is because your screen’s quality requirements are lower than your printer’s. To avoid sounding too technical, here’s a simpler example: While the image gracing your 22” screen looks excellent in a resolution of 1680 x 1050, printing it will produce a 5.6” x 3.5” image. For an image to look as good in print as on your screen, it needs to be three times as large, i.e. 5625 x 3525 pixels.

Lossy Compression

Though JPEG is versatile and you can easily increase its size, you will still need an image converter due to Lossy Compression.  Lossy Compression is an aggressive compression format that is responsible for the small size JPEGs boast. However, because of it, data is lost from the file, creating visible “artifacts” and pixelization issue in an image. This is why you should consider a Loss-less format like PSD or TIFF and convert your JPEG file into it.

Other Issues with JPEG

Aside from quality-related issues, JPEG has numerous limitations that make it useless for printed documents. For starters, the file format is not good for small images or those with textual data. JPEG is also far from feasible when used for repeatedly edited images. Now you can easily resolve these by investing more time, effort and money on professional software, but why should you when you can easily convert JPEG to any other format using an image converter?

Now that you know why JPEG is inefficient for printed publications, make sure to use other file formats instead. Luckily, an image converter is just a click away. All you need to do is upload the JPEG file, choose the new format, and download the converted image. It’s just that simple. So if you print images regularly, bookmark a reliable file converter and use its image file conversion feature every time.