Different image formats for web browsers

This post is about different image formats for web browsers like jpeg,png,gif and WebP.I assume that all of you are aware of first three image formats but very few know about WebP.So i will be explaining each of them independently.

JPEG : JPEG is acronym of "Joint photographic expert group" .It is in Raster format .Basically JPEG is a compression method.JPEG compressed images are usually stored in JFIF file format (JPEG file interchange format).The file extension we used in JPEG is .jpg or .jpeg.JPEG compression is called lossy compression that is the degree of compression can be adjusted allowing a tradeoff between storage size and image quality but JPEG often suffers degradation in image quality when repeatedly edited and saved.JPEG/JFIF is most common image format for storing and transmitting images on World wide web.This format is simply called JPEG. 

GIF : GIF (Graphics interchange format) is a bitmap image format.This image format is widely used in World wide Web due to its portablity and support.It is limited to 8 bit pallete or 256 colors.This makes GIF more suitable for storing graphics with very few colors such as simple diagrams,logos and shapes.It also support animations and have seperate pallete for each of the frames in animation.It also uses lossless compression which is more effective when applying to large areas with single color.It is not suitable for digital photography.

PNG : PNG (Portable network graphics) is raster graphics file format.It supports lossless compression.PNG was create das a replacement of GIF.It supports 8 bit palleted images in addition with 24 bit truecolor or 48 bit truecolor.PNG is designed to work in an online web applications like web browsers.It is fully streamable with progressive display options.PNG is robust.It detect common transmission errors.Animated formats derived from PNG are MNG and APNG.

WEBP : WebP is image format that uses both lossy and lossless compression used by JPEG an PNG.Developed by google it is suppossed to be a new open standard for lossily compressed true color graphics on web.WebP supports animation,XMP metadata and tiling.The main aim of google was to reduce image size for faster web page loading.It is supported by browsers Chrome and Opera as of now.Amongst the graphic software picasa,pixcelmator and imagemagick support WebP.A plug-in is used in Adobe photoshop for the support of WebP in it.Gmail and picasa web albums also support WebP.It is also supported by google app engine.The instant preview feature of google currently uses WebP to reduce the disk space used by previews.The WebP is widely used in the development of games because it is more effective then other image formats.

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