Today, web designers from Upplabs will share with you information about the best image formats in web design. You may get acquainted with the specifics of the company on the company’s website: https://upplabs.com/
Photos, graphics and background images are visual elements of web design that affect the appearance of the site and its loading speed.
There’re several graphic formats that are most commonly used on web pages. These are JPEG, GIF, PNG and SVG extensions. How do they differ from each other?
JPEG
JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group), also known as JPG, is a 16-bit bitmap graphics format. It is a popular extension for digital photos that have vivid colors and fine details. Many digital camera models prefer to work with this format.
Since JPEG images tend to load quickly, most web designers prefer to use this format for their websites. JPEG uses a complex compression algorithm that reflects the ratio between the quality of the file and the degree of compression. With the optimal compression percentage (60-75%), the file size is reduced without causing noticeable changes in the appearance of the picture. However, one should keep in mind that every repeated saving of the JPEG file decreases its quality.
The JPG format does not support transparency, making it almost useless for logos and icons. Also, this format is not suitable for graphic text files, since when they are compressed, the blurriness increases and the clarity of the picture is lost.
Thus, JPEG is a great extension for web design, but you should use PSD, TIFF, RAW formats to store the original images.
GIF
GIF (Graphic Interchange Format) is a type of bitmap limited to 256 colors. The compression algorithm for this file format is less complex than for JPG files and does not cause data loss. GIF extension is very effective for logos, icons, tables, but absolutely not suitable for digital photos, which have thousands of shades of colors.
The GIF format has two distinctive features. These are image transparency and animation capabilities.
• Transparency is relative: pixels can be either 100% transparent or 100% opaque. There are no intermediate values. If you make any color transparent, then it will be transparent throughout the image. For example, you can place a logo graphic on top of another graphic. For years GIF was the only format that supported transparency. Now, for this purpose, you can use the PNG and SVG extensions.
• Animated GIF – a common image format on the Internet. Any GIF animation file consists of several consecutive frames following each other with a slight delay. Frame replay can be looped endlessly, or it can be forced to stop at the end.
PNG
PNG (Portable Network Graphic) is a bitmap image format that is a combination of GIF and JPEG. It is best used for simple and flat graphic design. PNG images perform better with transparency than GIFs, but unlike GIF, animation cannot be generated using PNG.
Using different illustrating tools designers create, edit and resize PNG files. When saving finished images, two types of extensions are used: PNG-8 (8-bit) or PNG-24 (24-bit).
• PNG-8 only displays 256 colors. It has good transparency parameters and an improved compression format.
• PNG-24 allows you to work with the maximum color depth of 24-bit. Thanks to its built-in alpha channel, PNG supports both transparency and translucency. Because of the lossless compression process, the files are still relatively large, so the PNG extension is less suitable for photos than JPG. But in the case when the quality of the image is more important than its size, the PNG-24 extension is preferred.
The PNG extension is most often used to publish small pictures, logos, icons, diagrams, graphic elements with transparency, and lossless photos.
SVG
SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) is the most common scalable vector format. Unlike bitmap extensions (JPG, GIF, and PNG), SVG files use vectors to create small files that can be scaled up to any size without loss of quality.
The possibilities of SVG files are unlimited. Responsive design in web development has increased the demand for these files significantly. The geometric nature of SVG files makes it easy to adapt vector graphics to the desired parameters. The size of the SVG file depends on its complexity. Thus, for simple images, the SVG file will be smaller than any bitmap counterpart (JPEG, PNG).
SVG is ideal for icons, logos, diagrams and other graphics that are created in vector software. Designers and developers can edit SVG files with simple code without using external editing programs.