Best suited for photographs or images with a gradient. Images can be highly compressed, but you will lose image quality since this is a lossy format. Do not edit and save the same jpeg multiple times; always keep the original image in a lossless format such as Photoshop PSD, PNG, or TIFF.
Pretty much a crappy format, its best use is for short animation. The transparency is either 100% opaque or 100% transparent. For an illustration of GIF’s limitation on transparency, see PNG vs. GIF.
Awesome for web graphics (that are not a photograph). PNG can do alpha transparency.
| Format | Transparency | Compression Type | Best Suited for |
|---|---|---|---|
| JPEG | None | Lossy | Photographs or gradients |
| GIF | Yes | Lossless | Very short animation |
| PNG | Alpha transparency | Lossless | Solid blocks of color, web graphics such as buttons and icons |