Popular Graphics File Formats

While working with digital images, there seems to be a lot of different graphics file formats. Despite what you may believe, each graphics format exists for a specific reason, either technical, aesthetic, or legal or financial. Some formats are patented or have patented technology included.

When you’re working with editors such as The GIMP, Adobe Photoshop or PaintShop, choose the right format for the task at hand.

Following is a list of some of the more popular formats, followed by an explanation of why you might want to use (or not use) them.

• BMP—Bitmapped graphics, which are commonly used in Windows. They are large and uncompressed files, good for icons and wallpaper.
• GIF—Graphics Interchange Format. Most graphics on the web once used this format, developed by CompuServe, one of the original online services. GIF uses a patented lossless compression algorithm (LZW) that requires a license to use.
• JPEG—The Joint Photographic Experts Group developed this format for electronic photographs. All digital cameras produce this format by default. The compression scheme loses some data, but provides a sharp image nonetheless.
• PNG—Portable Network Graphics. The open source replacement for GIFs.
• SVG—Scalable Vector Graphics. The Next Big Thing, this web graphics standard is being developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
• TIF—Tagged Image File. Often used for printing and publishing.