WEAVING TALES, WEAVING WEBSITES:
Websites 101

Image Formats

Web browsers support two primary image formats:

As you can see from the examples below, photographs lose a lot of their quality when saved in GIF format. (Their file size is also larger than the same images saved in JPG format. Think of the GIF examples here as being "flooded" with more color information than they can reasonably handle!)

JPEG (millions of colors) - 4 KB	GIF (up to 256 colors) - 12 KB
JPEG (millions of colors) - 4 KB	GIF (up to 256 colors) - 12 KB

On the other hand, while there's no immediate discernable difference in the appearance of a simpler image like the Northlands logo in both formats (below), it's better to save it in GIF format. Even though the logo does not contain "millions" of colors, the JPEG example tries to "interpret" more colors than there are; hence it has a larger file size — more than twice that of the comparable GIF file.

JPEG (millions of colors) - 11 KB

GIF (up to 256 colors) - 4 KB

When deciding which format to use when saving an image, it's important to keep the above guidelines in mind regarding the image's quality and its file size. (Images with larger file sizes can significantly slow down how fast your entire page loads in a browser.)

A third image type, PNG, is also viewable on the Web, but this format is not as widely recognized as JPEG and GIF formats. Images in other formats such as TIF, BMP, WMF, ART, (etc.) cannot be viewed in a web browser.

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R. Hardy Garrison / Tell-Tale (de)Sign