[thelist] Image Formats Description

aardvark roselli at earthlink.net
Sun Feb 9 12:30:01 CST 2003


> From: Kevin Cannon <p+evolt at redbrick.dcu.ie>
[...]
> Does anyone know where I can find some decent descriptions fo the main
> image formats for a lay person.
>
> Basically where it says stuff like, gif is generally used for images
> like cartoons or graphs, images with large areas of flat colour
> etc...?

the book linked in my .sig talks about that, as well as the Web
Professionals Handbook, also from glasshaus...

when talking about images on the web, i generally assume people want
to know raster formats... for vector formats, look to Flash and
SVG...

for raster...

.jpg
photos and images where the lossy compression won't adversely affect
minor color changes and edge blurriness...

.gif
images of flat color, hard edges, including things like text and
illustration... also for its animation capability...

.png
can do both photo and flat color images as it supports more colors,
better compression, and multiple bit-depths...advanced transparency
capability... browser support, however, ain't the best...

.mng
designed to allow multiple images, animation, and transparent .jpg
(which will then be called .jng)... less browser support than for
.png...

does that help some? it's *very* short, but it's the salient
points...

--
my latest book project:
  Web Graphics for Non-Designers
  http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1904151159/evoltorg02-20
  ISBN: 1904151159






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