#Best image format for web background series

JPG files offer various compression levels: around 60% is fine for web images, while anything higher than 75% produces some quality degradation in the image. Being a lossy file type, you can use compression to reduce its file size quite considerably.This makes it the ideal choice for displaying photography on the web The JPG format can display millions of colors.Here’s why this image format is so popular: JPEG or JPG is a lossy image format developed by the Joint Photographic Experts GroupĪlmost 3% of all content types on websites is made of JPG images.

However, because they are highly suited to the demand for responsive and fast-loading websites, their popularity has been considerably growing. The last two, i.e., SVG and webP, although not being exactly new formats, are not mainstream yet. The first three image file types I’m going to introduce below, i.e., JPG, GIF and PNG, have been in use on websites for a very long time. This preliminary info is helpful when it comes to decide on the best image format for your content. Lossless image formats you can easily find on the web are GIF and PNG. However, because of this, lossless file formats usually have a larger file size than lossy ones. This means that compression does not result in a decrease in file quality. Lossy compression involves a trade-off between small file size and quality.Ī lossy image type you see a lot on the web is JPEG.īy contrast, lossless compression involves no data loss between the compressed asset and the original. However, with smaller file size you also irreversibly lose some quality with respect to the original file. What this means in practice is that the more you compress a lossy file, the smaller it gets. Lossy methods can provide high degrees of compression and result in smaller compressed files, but some number of the original pixels, sound waves or video frames are removed forever. The second one shows a detail of an enlarged version of the same imageīoth Lossy and lossless refer to file compression techniques applied to digital media, i.e., images, audio and video.ĭoes not decompress digital data back to 100% of the original. The first one is the image at its natural size. Here are two raster images (JPG) of an apple. Popular raster image types for the web are JPEG or JPG, GIF and PNG formats. Raster images don’t scale very well: if you enlarge a raster image, it will lose sharpness and quality. Each pixel stores color and transparency values. Raster or bitmap images are made of a two-dimensional grid of pixels. In particular, I introduce the image formats that work best on the web and what kind of images they are most suitable for.īut before I go any further, let’s briefly clarify some terminology. In this article, I discuss the first point. Using images correctly on the web mainly involves two things: The flip side is that, if not used correctly, images are often the main cause of a slow website and poor user experience.

This is not surprising: images add beauty, communicate messages, tell stories and create connections with your website visitors. Thank you for supporting the partners who make SitePoint possible.Īs of March 2017, images make up over 65% of web content.

#Best image format for web background series

This article is part of a series created in partnership with SiteGround.