Differences Between JPG, PNG, and GIF

These are the 3 major image formats used on the internet, but have you ever wondered about the differences between them? If you're curious, let's satisfy that curiosity together.

Its main purpose is to compress professionally taken photographs, and indeed, it produces the most successful compressed images.

It is one of the most commonly used image extensions on the internet because it can reduce an image that takes up megabytes of space to just 100 - 200 kilobytes. Additionally, it does this compression without any degradation or loss in image quality.

It is an extension that emerged in 1986 and supports 16 million colors.

Unfortunately, once compression is done it cannot be reversed, and it does not support images with transparent backgrounds.

PNG was created in 1990 mainly for use on the internet.

Today, it is also used for things like logos in addition to its internet use.

PNG offers 24-bit color support and, in addition, is the most suitable image extension for creating images with transparent backgrounds.

Although it cannot compress as much as jpg it's a disadvantage, this shortcoming is something we can overlook thanks to its transparency support.

Another downside is its lack of support in older browsers, but nowadays, I haven't seen a browser that doesn't support png.

GIF is generally an extension we see in animated images on the internet and only offers 8-bit color support.

That's why, if you pay attention, there are deteriorations in the quality of images saved as GIF.

The GIF extension is as old as JPG and was made in 1987. Although the quality loss is near 0% in GIFs, making their use seem very logical, due to the 8-bit color support, we recommend sticking with PNG and JPG for high quality images just in case.