Yes, most have their uses in some niche or other. But it's not what's useful or necessary - which do you LIKE to save as, create, view, etc? And why? You don't have to explain why but it would be interesting to hear if you do happen to have a reason.
If you don't know or don't care, that's fine too! We're not all fortunate enough to be geeks.
Besides JPG I also like GIF and PNG too - gif for animated smilies, png for transparent backgrounded pictures. Jpeg is for showing picures, storing them on HDD, sending thm in emails, etc. Mostly. :)
ReplyDeleteCorrect! ;-)
ReplyDeleteI chose PNG overall because I like high-quality and transparency.
But animation only comes in GIFs (which otherwise I hate) and JPGs still give one of the smallest files sizes for photos (GIFs do for flat colors).
TIFF and RAW are good if you want to process them in Photoshop, since they are "lossless" formats - no compression at all. But obviously, the filesizes are huge, so you'd never use them on the web.
Like I said each type has its use. I used to be a JPG guy but more and more I save screenshots and Photoshop creations I want to put on my blog as PNG-24 (for transparency) or PNG-8 (for simpler images). I just like the high quality of PNG and in most cases it's not much bigger in size than a JPG, yet looks much better on-screen (far fewer artifacts, IMO).
PICT is like TIFF, but really only used on the Macintosh. Nobody actually uses it seriously anymore.
I picked JPG since most people I know are only about half computer savvy and wouldn't know what a RAW or PNG photo was if it hit them in the face so that's what I habitually default to when I save.
ReplyDeleteI think you're being a little generous there saying most people are half savvy :P
ReplyDeleteNothing wrong at all going with JPG. It's by far the most popular format, it has 'good' compression, everything supports it, and everybody knows what it is. Can't go wrong, just like with MP3 for music.
I just like PNG because I like the quality, and I like H.234/MKV better than DivX/AVI for movies, I like HTML5 better than Flash for animation, and I like AAC or M4A more than MP3 for music. In all cases, you better quality per size with the newer codecs. But the downside is once in awhile people won't know what the heck to do with your file.
That's always the danger of being in the minority/leading edge. In some cases it's safer to stick with what people know... guess it depends on what the situation is.
Thanks!
By the way...
ReplyDeleteDid you know what these common document extentions mean?
JPG - Joint Photographic Experts Group
GIF - Graphics Interchange Format
PNG - Portable Network Format
RAW - Raw binary data from camera
AVI - Audio/Video Interleave
WMV - Windows Media Video
MOV - Quicktime Movie
MKV - Matroshka (H.234) Video
MP3 - MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3
WMA - Windows Media Audio
AAC - Advanced Audio Coding
WAV - WAVeform audio format
ZIP - Zipped archive file
RAR - Roshal ARchive file
BIN - Binary file
DLL - Dynamic-Link Library
DOC - MS Word file
XLS - MS Excel file
PPT - MS Powerpoint file
MDB - MS Access database
PSD - Adobe Photoshop Document
PDF - Portable Document Format
HTM - HyperText Markup Language
XML - eXtensible Markup Language
There are hundreds more for all possible types of documents, of course, but I'll stop there. :)
suddenly I have a whole new world of opportunity for a line of goat names... I've got three doelings who need to be named... GIF, JPG, and RAW anyone??
ReplyDeleteIt would illegal to sell any of RAW's milk! ;-)
ReplyDeleteha ha ha! right, didn't think about that. Actually I was thinking of using the acronyms but making up new meanings. Like RAW = Really AWesome and JPG = Just PrancinG or something equally silly.
ReplyDeleteJust a thought on a brain draining Monday...
I don't know the differences but i know what works well, like Mandy says, for sending in emails, etc. I just know jpg is reliable and it works for me.
ReplyDeleteA very practical sentiment.
ReplyDeleteOr is that sediment...