- The time has come for some head-to-head comparisons of JPEGs and GIFs.
- In the following examples, you can see for yourself how well these formats perform their intended purposes, and why these two image file formats are the perfect complement to one another for publishing on the World Wide Web.
- So, is GIF superior to JPEG in quality and filesize reduction? Absolutely not.
- For those images that lend themselves to JPEG compression, JPEG can typically beat GIF 4:1 in filesize, even at the higher quality settings for JPEG compression where image loss is not a factor.
- The loss of image quality resulting from the color depth reduction to 256 for the GIF format is more than a little obvious in the example below.
Picture 1 - JPEG 2,583 bytes 16.8m color PSP Compression: 40
Picture 2 -GIF 8,399 bytes 256-color
- This is just one example of how a Gif image when reduced in color from a JPG is effected. Also notice the difference in the file size. The GIF is more than double the size of the JPG.
- Here is another example of using JPEG instead of Gif.
- This top picture is again a Gif followed by a JPEG saved at "hi" quality (or low compression) You should be able to see the jpg has a better quality image, especially on thousands of colours.
- So to round off this part i hope that these few examples have given you an insight to which image to use when creating a web page or using any other type of image.>
- My personal suggestion is to use JPEG compression at 75% for most pictures. As well, don't forget about image size. A four-by-six inch photo takes four times longer to load than a two-by-three inch photo. Cropping unnecessary background from a photo will drastically reduce image size.
- JPEG is usually best for images that involve smooth color gradients; typical examples are photos and naturalistic artwork.
- GIF is usually best for images with sharp-edged areas of flat color. Examples include line drawings, simple icons and buttons, and textual images