Battle of the image formats: JPEG GIF PNG

Not long ago there was very little choice when it came to using images online for web sites.

You could either pick GIFs for solid/graphic elements, or JPEGs for photos. That was pretty much the entire story for the 90s and much of the early 2000s.

So what has changed since then? Not much. The PNG format is gradually becoming more mainstream, but it still hasn’t taken off. No doubt this is because of its lousy support from IE 6 (Internet Explorer 6) and below. Yet PNG has many advantages over the GIF format. First and foremost it can support both an 8 bit and a 24 bit palette. Using the 24 bit format, PNG allows discerning web designers to use fancy elements such as full alpha transperantcy. That said, GIF still allows somewhat better compression abilities for certain types of graphics in 8 bit format, than does PNG. JPEG still rules the roost when it comes to photographic like images, and it’s doubtful that PNG in its 24 bit format, will usurp JPEG any time soon.

With Microsoft’s IE 8 now in beta, and IE 6 slowly but gradually becoming a thing of the past (and thank god for that), PNG will soon enjoy a much more favoured position. GIF really is an outdated format, and the JPEG format is to specialised to enjoy much portability in general web use - apart from photos. Hopefully, in the next few years, and with the increasing adoption of more standards compliant browsers - such as Firefox, Safari and Google’s Chrome, PNG will see much more mainstream adoption.