AhmedSalmanJamal
hi there...which format of picture would u guys recon will give the best quality - jpeg, gif, bmp, png, tiff ,etc? 
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Picture Formatarch23
depends on what you need to achieve - elaborate...
manumiglani
It depends, i use .jpeg mostly if i do not need a gif. heady233
I think .png gives the best quality but it's also the biggest file size. AhmedSalmanJamal
Well I need make a cover page for a catalogue and I am using Macromedia Fireworks for that. So I was just pondering which file format the pictures should be exported to... Arnie
I personally use either JPEG or PNG. (GIF only for animated stuff.) Usually it's best to use JPEG for photos, and PNG for pictures that have the same color on a lot of pixels, like screenshots or gnuplot graphs. This is because PNG compresses that very well. If you don't want any quality loss, don't use JPEG but PNG.
AhmedSalmanJamal
Cool! thank you my friend  I shall definitely use the PNG format then .... Cheers elekis
and png is under gpl , not jpeg that's a plus- value no??
AhmedSalmanJamal
Yes...yes...that is definitely a plus point! Ducksteina
You should remember every file format but raw data reduces the image's quality. I handle my images like this:
Normal Photos: JPG with best quality Banners: GIF (animations) or PNG (transparency) Small Images (like smilies): GIF High-Quality Photos: Raw data Stubru Freak
That's not true. I don't think png loses quality. But even if it does, there are certainly ways to compress most images without losing quality. Ducksteina
Well, you're right. PNG compresses data without losing quality. That was new for me. Well, thanks for the information AftershockVibe
Remember that transparency in PNG doesn't work with Internet Explorer though, so be careful.
Not natively anyway, there are CSS hacks that can fix it. Arnie
That's right, I forgot to mention transparancy. For that and/or animation, GIF is the standard of preference.
{name here}
JPEG: Meant for photos. With the Gimp or another advanced image editing program you may compress without losing quality, but it ends up the size of a PNG anyway...
PNG: Good for general use. Use it with anything, but is a tad big. GIF: Good for transperency, banners, and emoticons: Limited to 256 colors and just about as good compression as a bitmap. BMP: Bitmap image - lossless quality but can get extremely large. Not reccomended for web pages or for anything because its so dated. TIFF: Excellent format for photos. Lossless quality. Will not display on webpages. TGA: Targa Format - pretty much outdated. XCF: GIMP Image. Supports layers and is a really good quality image format. Does not support animation. Does not display in web browsers. PSD: Photoshop image. Just as good as XCF. In conclusion, use JPEG and PNG if you are to put it upon a web page. If you are not, TIFF, XCF, and PSD are your best choices... AhmedSalmanJamal
So you recon I should be using PNG for the purpose of designing cover pages? dz9c
Same here, thats exactly how they should be handled. ck88
The picture is for the cover of a catalogue? If you have that printed professionally you should talk to the people who do the printing.
Since you are not using Photoshop the psd format (the standard) is out of the question. I guess the tiff format would then be the best choice, at least where I work. Jpg is only used if you have to transmit the files and bandwidth or speed is a restriction in the process. If the catalogue is an online one the jpeg/gif ... rules sound ok. I don't know about the png transparency problem though. I thought they fixed it. ACDSee offer now jpg2000 which is basically jpg with a gif like compression that causes less artifacts. photographerguy
I agree with most of the posts here.
Raw data out of camera is the highest quality there is, but you can't do anything with it. You must import it, make adjustments, and output to a file type depnding on what you are going to do with it. PNG is lossless compression. It can have transparent backgrounds with better quality than .gif, but also bigger size. Also the IE problem. I hate IE, but it is the most commonly used browser. JPG is best for photos. It is possible to get small file sizes with minimal loss of quality. If you make multiple changes/saves in this format, artifacts will eventually be noticible. Some argue that .jpg and .png are equal in size. This isn't true. If you have Photoshop/Imageready, Fireworks, or GIMP, test it out by saving with different .jpg and .png settings, it is always possible to get a smaller .jpg. Technically, since the .png is lossless, it may look better, but alot of times, you won't notice on a 200X200 picture on the web. I don't mess with .gif much so I'm not going to give you advice on something I don't know alot about. As far as .psd and .xcf (Photoshop and Gimp) they are lossless and can be changed as many times as you want without degrading quality. So just work on your file in native format of the program you are using and output to .jpg or .png etc when you are going to use it for something. .TIFF are usless unless you wan't to waste a bunch of space. Most places you can get your pictures printed only accept .jpg Ranfaroth
Sebaci
JPG is not good and pictures in JPG have bad quality. In the internet the best format is PNG - Portable Network Graphisc. Some time ago I read about MUV format - it was much better than JPG, even the best, but we don't hear anything about it now...
photographerguy
No you are wrong. PNG are not smaller than .GIF greendayonline.co.nr
I use .gif for small images, jpegs for images
Ranfaroth
Read this article or this comparaison, or just test by yourself  Stubru Freak
It really depends on the nature of the image, some are smaller in GIF, some are smaller in PNG. In my experience simple images are smaller in GIF, while complex images are smaller in PNG. Arnie
Exactly. It depends on the situation. GIF is even better than PNG in compressing large areas with the same color. Try making a 1024x768 image with just one color (for example red). It will be compressed better by GIF.
photographerguy
Ranfaroth - Now that I am irritated and having an argument with you, I looked up some articles on the internet
this one is decent: http://www.evolt.org/article/To_PNG_or_not_to_PNG/22/60134/ I will admit that you may be correct most of the time. When I did comparisons I was looking at the png-24 which is significantly bigger than png-8. I also use the industry standard photoshop which I wasn't aware that it didn't compress .png as well as other programs. I also saw a few articles that stated images with few colors will compress better in the .gif format. The majority of the articles did state that .png are 5-25% smaller than .gif. So I guess we agree to disagree. It depends on what program you are using and possibly the complexity and number of colors in an image. I will give you credit though, it seems that usually .png are smaller than .gif, but not in my limited experience. At least I learnded something by this, hopefully others will also, that is the beauty of public forums. My first comment was meant to be more light-hearted than rude. Azzer
I personally use PNG, I find it helps when using Photoshop...
dz9c
You are right lol. PNG are much bigger, everyone should know that elekis
http://www.evolt.org/article/To_PNG_or_not_to_PNG/22/60134/
I said... d722002
i use PNG for everything. it looks good, and it has a small file size, so its good for websites.
Ranfaroth
photographerguy : I'm glad to see you recognize you were wrong.
The thing to remember is that it's not because a bad software doesn't know how to compress in a file format that this file format is bad... Just use good tools to see actual results photographerguy
I didn't admit to being wrong.
I said:
I said you were correct in most cases. As far as using good tools, if Photoshop isn't a good tool, I don't know what is. It's unfortunate that it doesn't compress as good as other programs. Stubru Freak
It's a good tool for editing images, not for saving and compressing those in the png format. Ranfaroth
Was it difficult to guess ?  photographerguy
I guess you don't understand English.
OK you win, I'm tired of bickering. Let's talk about something constructive. Ranfaroth
(Before learning english, learn logic
 )Animal
Just a quick reminder to Ranfaroth and photographerguy:
This is not a discussion about Photoshop. It's a discussion about photograph file formats.
There's a great suggestion Petee
I use PNG for most of my stuff. For what I use it for it has the smallest size, which is good for using on the web, which is what I use most of my images for. I also use BMP for video editing, but only that because you need the high quality.
AhmedSalmanJamal
I would like to thank Ranfaroth and photographerguy for their kind information...both of you are very knowledgeable which is very pleasing to know...you provided very good entertainment too...well just for your information I am using Macromedia Fireworks for designing several elements - like coverpages for catalogues, web images, posters, etc... Thank you once again
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