whats better for web? JPG or PNG?

VeNT · 9 Oct 2006 at 18:35

ok, I've been playing around with my photos and have started to upload the images to a few sites, but I'm unsure as to what format to use!

some people tell me JPEG is fine, others tell me PNG is the way to go, I can't realy tell the difference (is there one?). all the original files are raw anyway and have to be converted to one format or another, currently I've been using JPG but don't like the way this handles the images too much, but I hear PNG can be as bad!

I'd REALY like some help here as I can't make my mind up!

Cuchulain · 9 Oct 2006 at 18:38

JPG for photos, GIF for images with very few colours and PNG for (semi) transparent.

nomore · 10 Oct 2006 at 01:21

PNG is superior to JPEG. It does not lose information when compressing the image. JPEG uses what is termed 'lossy-compression'.

For example, if an image had a long red line from the left to the right, and in the middle of that line, there was one blue pixel... JPEG would remove the blue pixel (replacing it with red) and hope that you don't notice.

PNG also allows for graduated tranlucency and 8-bit per pixel pallet (like GIF) if required.

However, Internet Explorer can have some trouble displaying PNG images with graduated translucency.

PNG files will also tend to be larger in size (bytes) than a JPEG.

VeNT · 10 Oct 2006 at 10:11

nomore said:
PNG is superior to JPEG. It does not lose information when compressing the image. JPEG uses what is termed 'lossy-compression'.

For example, if an image had a long red line from the left to the right, and in the middle of that line, there was one blue pixel... JPEG would remove the blue pixel (replacing it with red) and hope that you don't notice.

PNG also allows for graduated tranlucency and 8-bit per pixel pallet (like GIF) if required.

However, Internet Explorer can have some trouble displaying PNG images with graduated translucency.

PNG files will also tend to be larger in size (bytes) than a JPEG.

I thought this was the case. just wanted to check, so you think PNG as its not the size per say that is an issue.

Tomsk · 10 Oct 2006 at 11:38

VeNT said:
I thought this was the case. just wanted to check, so you think PNG as its not the size per say that is an issue.

If you're uploading the photos so other people can see them, then JPEG is fine.

If you're uploading photos so other people can download them, 'shop' them and use as they see fit, then PNG is fine.