Know Your File Types: JPEG, GIF, and PNG

Digital images are a standard part of our everyday lives. You can’t scroll though Twitter without seeing a GIF, Instagram is made for sharing JPEGs, and your email is swamped with JPEGs, PNGs, and GIFs.

These images and file types are a part of our daily lives. In our heavily visual and online world, understanding how to use these different file types can improve the quality of the digital images that your audience sees, and potentially even help you save space on your computer.

ALSO CHECK OUT THIS COOL INFOGRAPHIC: The Periodic Table of Punctuation

When it comes to file types, we as communicators and designers often don’t really understand when to use a PNG image rather than a JPEG one, or when to use a GIF rather than a PNG image.

The following infographic that I recently happened upon from Who Is Hosting This? helps us to establish the differences between these three formats and explains some of the best uses for the different file types.

ALSO CHECK OUT THIS COOL INFOGRAPHIC: The Periodic Table of Punctuation