Jpg or gif which is better

And that brings us to PNG. The way it works is actually somewhat similar to the way the GIF format works. In fact, the old PNG-8 variant is limited to colors, but people hardly use that anymore. The format we most typically use is called PNG, and it supports up to 16 million colors, meaning that it acts as a lossless format. No detail is lost. There is built-in file compression. Have a look at the PNG version of my very simple graphic from earlier:.

However, this is true only for the most minimalist of images, with solid colors and simple shapes. That photo of Gary, the pretty chill donkey? Its PNG version weighs in at 2. As a bonus, PNG supports transparency, which means you can take a PNG image with no background, and overlay it on any kind of background you like. PNG, however, does it better. I then placed those images on another, darker background to show you how each format handles transparency:.

As you can see, the transparency provided by the GIF format leaves the shapes with rather jagged edges. PNG wins, here. On websites, PNG is typically used for things like logos, icons, and generally very simple graphics. Each has its own history and way of doing things.

The information in this article barely scratches the surface, and each format on its own could easily fill a book or three. The three formats are also supported across all major browsers Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari and the vast majority of less well-known browsers. Ezequiel Bruni is biologically Canadian, legally Mexican, and self identifies as a total nerd.

He also loves video games, tacos, open source software, video games, sci-fi and fantasy in all their forms, and video games. He does not love writing in the third person. We check all user comments within 48 hours to make sure they are from real people like you. We're glad you found this article useful - we would appreciate it if you let more people know about it.

Once a month you will receive interesting, insightful tips, tricks, and advice to improve your website performance and reach your digital marketing goals! Hire a professional designer for a great price and get a unique logo for your brand. It can achieve compression ratios of without any perceivable difference in quality.

Beyond this, the compression artefacts become more prominent. Because JPEG compression works by averaging out colours of nearby pixels read Discrete Cosine Transform , JPEG images are best suited for photographs and paintings of natural scenes where the variations in colour and intensity are smooth. However, if an image contains text or lines, where a sharp contrast between adjacent pixels is desired to highlight the proper shape, this lossy compression technique does not yield good results.

No data is lost during compression and no compression artefacts are introduced in the image. For this reason, a PNG image would retain higher quality than an image than JPEG and would look a lot sharper, it would also occupy more space on the disk.

This makes it unsuitable for storing or transferring high-resolution digital photographs but a great choice for images with text, logos and shapes with sharp edges. It was favoured over PNG for simple graphics in websites in its early days because the support of PNG was still growing. In a simple form, transparency indicates something that is completely invisible. Logos and icons often need to be placed on backgrounds with variable colours.

Hence it is desirable, that the background of these logos and icons is made transparent so that a single image can be used over multiple background variations. PNG images support transparency in two ways — inserting an alpha channel that allows partial transparency or by declaring a single colour as transparent index transparency. Partial transparency makes the edges blend smoothly into the background.

GIF images support transparency by declaring a single colour in the colour palette as transparent index transparency.

Because of absence of partial transparency, the edges specially rounded or too-detailed edges get a poor jagged effect. Though this can be solved to some extent using dithering, with improved PNG support, GIF is unsuitable for images with transparent backgrounds. There is a significant difference in the number of colours that can be supported by these 3 formats. JPEG images have a sliding scale of compression that decreases file size tremendously, but increases artifacts or pixelation the more the image is compressed.

The big question: how is it pronounced? GIF is also a widely used web image format, typically for animated graphics like banner ads, email images and social media memes. Though GIFs are lossless, they can be exported in a number of highly customizable settings that reduce the amount of colors and image information, which in turn reduces the file size. This format has built-in transparency, but can also display higher color depths, which translates into millions of colors.

PNGs are a web standard and are quickly becoming one of the most common image formats used online. Because of its extremely high quality, the format is primarily used in photography and desktop publishing. These files will be much smaller than traditional TIFF files, which are typically very large. Typically, images are processed adjusted for color, white balance, exposure, etc. PSD is a proprietary layered image format that stands for Photoshop Document.

These are original design files created in Photoshop that are fully editable with multiple layers and image adjustments. PSDs are primarily used to create and edit raster images, but this unique format can also contain vector layers as well, making it extremely flexible for a number of different projects. A PSD can be exported into any number of image file formats, including all of the raster formats listed above. Vector images are digital artwork in which points, lines and curves are calculated by the computer.

Unlike raster images, vector images are resolution in dependent. Because your image will always render identically, no matter the size, there is no such thing as a lossy or lossless vector image type. Vector images are typically used for logos, icons, typesetting and digital illustrations. Adobe Illustrator is the industry-standard image editor that is used to create, design and edit vector images though it can also incorporate raster images, as well.

PDF stands for Portable Document Format and is an image format used to display documents and graphics correctly, no matter the device, application, operating system or web browser. At its core, PDF files have a powerful vector graphics foundation, but can also display everything from raster graphics to form fields to spreadsheets.

Because it is a near universal standard, PDF files are often the file format requested by printers to send a final design into production.

Both Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator can export straight to PDF, making it easy to start your design and get it ready for printing. Although it is used primarily as a vector format, an EPS file can include both vector and raster image data. Typically, an EPS file includes a single design element that can be used in a larger design. It can be searched, indexed, scaled and compressed and can result in smaller file sizes than other file formats, which makes it ideal for web.

SVG files can be edited in graphic editing programs as well as text editors. AI is a proprietary vector image format that stands for Adobe Illustrator. Like those formats, AI files are primarily a vector-based format, though they can also include embedded or linked raster images. Our newsletter is for everyone who loves design!