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When To Use .jpg vs. .gif vs. .png

   January 21st, 2015

If you work on your library's website, this infographic on when to use different graphic formats might be useful. Tech things like this always interest me (if you're only a little interested, skip down to the What Should You Use section at the very bottom for the summary). (via)

And speaking of image stuff, Here's a List of More Than 30 Free Image Sites That Don't Look Stock-y. Nice-looking free images are always a good resource. (via)

graphic format inforgraphic



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6 Responses to “When To Use .jpg vs. .gif vs. .png”

  1. Chris Says:

    tl;dr version: jpg – never, gif – animated only, png – always when not animated.

  2. Chris Says:

    Also, gif is pronounced hard G as in Guh-if. The G stands for Graphic, so the G should pronounced the same way. The creator is incorrect in his pronunciation.

  3. Brian Herzog Says:

    @Chris: my rule of thumb is pretty much jpg for photos, png for everything else, and never use gif because I don’t often do animations. However, if Photoshop’s Save For Web tells me that jpg will be a smaller file size than png, then I go with that.

    And I’m with you on the gif pronunciation (in other words, not like the peanut butter), and was disappointed a few years ago when the format’s creator came out on the side of the peanut butter people. However this is the internet so I get to choose what to accept as truth – besides, I’d been saying it the hard-G way for fifteen years at that point, so I’m not going to change.

  4. Chris Says:

    JPG compression is so awful, I really hate ever using the format.

  5. Andrew Says:

    And let’s not forget TIFF for archives.

  6. Library Links, 23rd January 2015 | Latest Library Links Says:

    […] Knowing when to use which type of image […]