JPEG vs GIF

JPEG and GIF are currently the most commonly used graphic file formats when creating a web design for the World Wide Web. The graphic file format which will best suit your design depends greatly on the style and design of your website. The following article explores and explains the differences between JPEG and GIF files, enabling you to decide which is best for your web design.

JPEG images and Web Design

Joint Photographic Experts Group or JPEG as it is more commonly known was named after the original committee which created the standard and is currently one of the most popular graphic file formats used for web design. JPEG files are ideal for web designs which wish to incorporate a lot of real world scenes such as photographs because it supports 16 million colours. The JPEG file compresses natural images which are either full colour or grey scale creating a considerably smaller image file. Additionally it is able to store 24-bit per pixel as opposed to 8-bit per pixel data. The JPEG format is not generally suited for web designs which rely on non realistic images such as cartoons or line drawings. Furthermore, if your web design requires black and white images or motion compression the JPEG is definitely not the way to go.

GIF images and Web Design

GIF files or Graphics Interchange Format Files support 256 colours and are excellent for web designs which incorporate images with large areas of flat colour. Furthermore GIF is ideally suited for black and white images, line drawings, illustrations, clip arts and small text of a few pixels. GIF files are extremely useful for web designs because it supports transparency. A transparent image allows the background of the web page to be displayed enabling the image to appear borderless. This is extremely useful for web designs in which the background of the web page and the background of the image differ.

JPEG versus GIF - The Summary

To summarise, just remember that when deciding on the type of graphic file format for your web design, if the images you are using consist of natural real world scenes and have lots of colours then use a JPEG file. However if your images have solid colours with no gradations, then GIF files are the best choice for your web design.