Week 4: Fundamentals of Web Design JIF, PNG, GIF

Every time I save a picture I see those three common acronyms JPG, GIF, and PNG. Always wondered what they meant, but I never delved into finding out. The video Fundamentals of Web Design introduced me to all of them. Those three acronyms are web graphing formats. Each format can be used for a different function. It all depends on what you need to use it for.

With several browsers available it is a good idea to know how each browser will support the quality of the viewed image. This can be achieved by keeping file images small, but image quality must always be kept in mind because the viewer wants a clear picture. Almost all browsers support JPG, GIF, and PNG. These are the standard formats for web graphics.

The most common format I have used is JPG. The acronym JPG stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group.It supports millions of colors and uses lossy compression to reduce image files.  It can reduce files to about 5% of their original file size. However, the more you compress a jpeg the more detail is lost. Although I use it the most it is recommended not to because each time an image is saved in this format more and more detail is lost.

GIF stands for Graphical Interchange Format. It is bit-mapped graphics file format used extensively on the World Wide Web. GIF supports color and various resolutions. It also includes data compression, but because it is limited to 256 colors, it is more effective for scanned images such as illustrations, icons, or logos rather than color photos.

PNG stands for Portable Network Graphics. A file format used as a portable way of describing graphics.They use lossless compression and use millions of colors. It is ideal for keeping the subtle tones in the image. The disadvantage of PNG is that they have larger files sizes than JPG and GIF.


When deciding which format to use you must take into consideration the file size, the clarity of the image you want to save, and the browser type you are using,