Post by Nick on Oct 28, 2010 5:02:48 GMT
(This is a tutorial I wrote a couple months ago on an old blog and I thought some people may enjoy it)
You are creating an images on your newly installed GIMP, and the time comes to save it, and you are not sure which format to save it in? There are many extensions for image saving, .GIF, .PNG, and .JPG being the most popular ones. By the end of this article, I want you to be able to understand the differences of these three formats, and when it is the best time to use them. Enjoy!
GIF (Graphics Interchange Format)
The .GIF format was first invented all the way back in 1987 by CompuServe for the purposes of the web, and was popular due to its portability and compatibility with various computers. GIF is a bitmap image format. It supports 8 bits per pixel, meaning you would have 256 different colors that the format supports. GIF images can also support animation, which is a series of GIF images played together in a sequence to make a short film like animation. Due to the limited amount of colors GIF supports, it is not recommended that you save photos in the format, logos, solid colors, and straight lines work great with GIF. Also note that GIF does support transparency. From experience, curved lines in large letters do NOT work ;D
PNG (Portable Network Graphics)
PNG’s was created by the same company as GIF was, CompuServe. In 1996, PNG was created for a mission on improving on the un-patented GIF format. The PNG format now accepted more colors, as well as Transparency/Opacity. It also did not lose quality when re-saved unlike GIF images, and the same image in GIF saved as a PNG, can be up to 25% more compressed. Unfortunately PNG has a couple downsides. One being that is not all browsers support it flawlessly. Internet has had problems with displaying PNG images since they first came out with their support for it in IE4. To this day, there is still a bug or two in the current version of IE, but it should work with the latest versions of Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, and Opera, and many others as well. Also note that PNG does not support animations like GIF.
JPEG/JPG (Joint Photographic Experts Group)
JPG images are probably the most common format used online today. It is great with detailed images including pictures and large abstract background due to the color range of over 16 million different colors, and the great 10:1 compression with minimal loss of quality. However, JPG does not work well with simple text, drawings, or straight lines as well as large areas of solid color. Pretty much the opposite of the GIF format. The reason for JPG not supporting such simple images is because during the compression, it will usually throw those features out, which makes the image smaller, and is not noticed in more complex images, though greatly affects simple images.
In Conclusion…
So just remember that GIF images are for animation, and small logos, icons, drawings, text, or large areas of solid colors. PNG is like GIF, though it doesn’t handle animation, has a larger variety of colors, and can compress further and is optimal for most web design images because of its great compromise between size and quality. And JPG Is for large complex images that have tons of different colors.
I hope you found this article useful, and and questions or comments, feel free to post them here!
You are creating an images on your newly installed GIMP, and the time comes to save it, and you are not sure which format to save it in? There are many extensions for image saving, .GIF, .PNG, and .JPG being the most popular ones. By the end of this article, I want you to be able to understand the differences of these three formats, and when it is the best time to use them. Enjoy!
GIF (Graphics Interchange Format)
The .GIF format was first invented all the way back in 1987 by CompuServe for the purposes of the web, and was popular due to its portability and compatibility with various computers. GIF is a bitmap image format. It supports 8 bits per pixel, meaning you would have 256 different colors that the format supports. GIF images can also support animation, which is a series of GIF images played together in a sequence to make a short film like animation. Due to the limited amount of colors GIF supports, it is not recommended that you save photos in the format, logos, solid colors, and straight lines work great with GIF. Also note that GIF does support transparency. From experience, curved lines in large letters do NOT work ;D
PNG (Portable Network Graphics)
PNG’s was created by the same company as GIF was, CompuServe. In 1996, PNG was created for a mission on improving on the un-patented GIF format. The PNG format now accepted more colors, as well as Transparency/Opacity. It also did not lose quality when re-saved unlike GIF images, and the same image in GIF saved as a PNG, can be up to 25% more compressed. Unfortunately PNG has a couple downsides. One being that is not all browsers support it flawlessly. Internet has had problems with displaying PNG images since they first came out with their support for it in IE4. To this day, there is still a bug or two in the current version of IE, but it should work with the latest versions of Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, and Opera, and many others as well. Also note that PNG does not support animations like GIF.
JPEG/JPG (Joint Photographic Experts Group)
JPG images are probably the most common format used online today. It is great with detailed images including pictures and large abstract background due to the color range of over 16 million different colors, and the great 10:1 compression with minimal loss of quality. However, JPG does not work well with simple text, drawings, or straight lines as well as large areas of solid color. Pretty much the opposite of the GIF format. The reason for JPG not supporting such simple images is because during the compression, it will usually throw those features out, which makes the image smaller, and is not noticed in more complex images, though greatly affects simple images.
In Conclusion…
So just remember that GIF images are for animation, and small logos, icons, drawings, text, or large areas of solid colors. PNG is like GIF, though it doesn’t handle animation, has a larger variety of colors, and can compress further and is optimal for most web design images because of its great compromise between size and quality. And JPG Is for large complex images that have tons of different colors.
I hope you found this article useful, and and questions or comments, feel free to post them here!
