Popular Image Formats
There are many different image formats available in the
imaging world today. However, only a few are very
popular and accepted as global standards. Here, the
Ilixis Developer's Corner will introduce pertinent facts
about a few popular image formats:
JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group)
JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) is a standardized image compression mechanism designed for compressing either full-color or gray-scale images of natural, real-world scenes. It works well on photographs, naturalistic artwork, and similar material. However, it does not work so well on lettering, simple cartoons, or line drawings. JPEG works by exploiting known limitations of the human eye, notably the fact that small color changes are perceived less accurately than small changes in brightness.
GIF (Graphics Interchange Format)
The GIF format is one of the most popular image formats
used on the Internet. GIF images are normally used for logos,
shapes and icons. The format is based on the lossless
LZW compression algorithm and is very suitable for
compressing large image areas of the same color. Another
important feature of GIF is that it supports animation.
PNG (Portable Network Graphics)
The Portable Network Graphics (PNG) format was designed to replace the older and simpler GIF format and, to some extent, the much more complex TIFF format.
TIFF (Tagged Image File Format)
TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) is one of the most popular and flexible of the current public domain raster file formats.
TIFF was developed by Aldus and Microsoft Corporation. The specification was owned by Aldus, which in turn merged with Adobe Systems. Consequently, Adobe Systems now holds the Copyright for the TIFF specification.
PCX (PC Paintbrush Exchange)
The PCX (PC Paintbrush
Exchange) image format is one of oldest raster formats. It was originally designed by
ZSoft to be used by PC Paintbrush for MS-DOS. Microsoft later acquired the right to use the PCX format for Microsoft Paintbrush for
Windows indirectly increasing the format's popularity.
TGA (Truevision Targa)
Truevision originally created a specification for a high-end image file format that will support images suitable for
display on the Truevision hardware line of graphic display cards.
As the image format's popularity increased, this format,
TGA (Targa), has been
migrated to many other platforms and applications.
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