COMMON BITMAP IMAGE FILE TYPES

File Size vs. Image Quality

JPEG, JPE, JPG

Best for full-color photographs Highly compressed Encoded in full color

Lossy compression Loses quality as you edit and save JPG most universally used lossy format

GIF Good for fewer colors, such as a logo Indexed format – uses up to 256 colors

o 256 = 28 referred to as 8-bit coloro Advantages

o Transparencyo Animation

PNG Two modes

Indexed Full color Lossless compression

Full and partial transparency Doesn’t support animation

XCF GIMP native format

Saves layers and other information

TIFF, TIF Full-color Non-lossy & lossless Various “dialects” of TIFF Good for keeping originals

RAW Proprietary camera formats

BMP Windows format; huge files; no advantage over

PNG or TIFF PSD

Adobe’s proprietary format ICO

Windows Icon format

IMAGE FILE CHARACTERISTI

CSGIF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF

GIF

GIF

JPEG, JPG, JPE

PNG

TIFF, TIF

COMPRESSION

BITMAP FILE FORMATS

Bitmap (Raster, Pixel) File Formats

File format Compression Full [RGB] or

Indexed Color? Transparency

Progressive? Interlace? Save in GIMP

Open in GIMP

1. Use Image/Mode/Indexed… before saving. Lossy Lossless Full Partial

GIF lossy indexed1, up to 256 colors full available yes yes

JPEG, JPG, JPE lossy full available yes yes

PNG lossless full and

indexed1, more than 256 colors

full partial

available yes yes

TIFF, TIF lossy (jpg) lossless (LZW) full yes yes

Bitmap, Raster, Pixel-based Images

Pixels Galore