JPEG File Format


Joint Photographic Experts Group - JPEG

The principle of the JPEG compression is to discard the information that the eye cannot see. Because of this the JPEG algorithm is known as lossy. When an image is compressed by this algorithm it means that when the image is decompressed it would not be an original copy of the image. Depending on the users requirement this is usually not a problem. If the original image is compared to a compressed one it is very difficult to see the difference, if the image were to be magnified many times then you would start to see the difference, but the magnification would have to be great; however if the compression is great then this would be noticed fairly quickly in the magnification process.

Jpeg compressed images can have various ratios of compression. The compression ration that is used depends on the type of image quality that is required and the purpose as to the use of that image. When the JPEG image is loaded into an application it is automatically decompressed. For most photographic images the JPEG compression is probably the best one to use, providing a combination of good image quality and file size.

This format is used extensively in compact digital cameras and many users of these cameras probably have thousands of images saved to disc. The problem with this? will there be an application that can read this jpeg format in ten or twenty years and will there be a DVD or CD player able to read the discs, the only certainty in the computing industry is constant change. In the days of film, prints can still be made from negatives that are over sixty plus years. At the moment there is no digital picture format that can be guaranteed to be around in fifty or one hundred years. So the only solution if you want to keep your valuable images for a very long time is to constantly transfer them to the next generation of image formats and storage media.

A description of the JPEG file format, there are other file format descriptions in the image formats section.

Free Jpeg Images, view the free jpeg galleries containing many interesting subjects. There are many different subjects and images are being added frequently.

View the free colourful galleries containing sharper digital pictures. Interested in image file formats then check out this section for descriptions of the popular file formats that are being used.

Jpeg compression provides an efficient way to reduce the file size of an image. One of the benefits of this is the reduced download time of the pictures.

Depending on compression settings when the picture is saved a greater or lesser amount of detail will be in the image. Image file size is therefore a compromise especially on the internet.