Image File Formats

What is What? Yes, that is a serious question. What is a Gif? What does Gif stand for? How many colors does a Gif file show. Are Gif files Web Safe? What is Web Safe? Should I use a jpeg or Gif? What is a PNG? What is the difference between a PNG-8 and a PNG-24? What the heck is a TIFF file, why use that? What the heck does Raw Data Mean. If I have a digital camera, what file format should I set the camera for when I´m taking the Picture?

These are very legitimate questions about image file formats. Each of the image file formats mentioned about have different “Super Powers” and properties. And remember, whatever of these image file formats you use, remember this, “Your favorite Picture is Forever.” Can you say, “Forever!”

I took a 9 week trip to Europe and the Middle East many years ago with my digital camera. I didn´t know anything about image file formats. I returned to the USA with thousands of great pictures from Great Britain, Germany, Italy, and Turkey. By accident, I took all of the pictures in a Raw Data file format. The file sizes as far as storage size was huge. I read about the Gif file making image file size smaller. If you don´t know if this was a good decision or not, you may want to WATCH My 19 minute video on You-Tube about image file formats.

This is a great video for people using and manipulating images for web sites, or anything digital, which these days is everything. Enjoy.