ToJPEG or to GIF

When you send a photo to grandma or post a picture to the web, size matters. The smaller the better! But, how do you compress your images and keep the quality too?

There are two file formats that are commonly used for image compression - JPEG and GIF. They are both high quality formats that are considered industry standards.

GIF, the graphics interchange format developed by CompuServe, is good for graphics that use only a few colors, for example text or logos. GIF images however, are limited to 256 colors and JPEGs can contain up to 16 million colors.

JPEG, developed by the Joint Photographic Experts Group,  is specifically designed to compress photographic image files, and compressed images retain a high level of color fidelity. This makes photographic JPEG files smaller and therefore quicker to download than photographic GIF files of comparable quality. You can choose how much to compress a JPEG file, but since it is a lossy format, the more you shrink your file, the more quality you will lose.

The bottom line: Use the GIF format for Images with large solid-color areas like logos or text. Use JPEG for images with photographic detail and color depth.