Which of the following graphics formats stores your pictures with a relatively small file size?

You may not pay much attention to the format of images you share, but if you want to do more than ’Gram then you’ll need to know them all. There are advantages and disadvantages to each format, and knowing which is the best to use at any given time will help you to present your photos in the best possible light. Here’s what you need to know about the four main image formats – JPEG, PNG, GIF, and raw.

JPEG stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group, which is the name of the organisation that developed the image format. When you save an image as a JPEG, some data from the image will be lost and deleted forever to reduce the size of the file.

This method is called “lossy compression”.

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JPEG is designed to compress photographs that use natural colours and light. It does not work well with line drawings of shapes, or text. Saving these kinds of graphics in JPEG often results in pixellation around the edges – when an image becomes blurry and you can see individual pixels. It’s also not a great idea to edit and save files as JPEGs several times over, because the quality of the image will be reduced each time you save.

Use JPEG if you want to make your photos small enough to share easily over the internet, but still retain fairly high image quality.

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PNG:

Portable Network Graphics (PNG) are different from JPEGs because they use “lossless compression”. This means a PNG can be compressed to a smaller file size without losing any of the detail in the image. This makes PNG a good option for saving graphics – such as logos, shapes, screenshots, illustrations, and text – that you want to share over the internet, or use in presentations.

These types of graphics won’t be as pixellated in PNG form as they would be as a JPEG. You can also share, edit, and save PNG files many times without losing any of the image quality. Unlike JPEGs, PNG files also support transparency, making this the format if you want part of your image, such as the background, to be transparent.

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GIF:

The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) is the predecessor (something that came before another thing) to the PNG, and they both use a similar type of lossless compression.

The GIF was designed more than 30 years ago, when internet speeds were slow, and images needed to be a lot smaller to be shared easily over the web. As a result, images saved as GIFs are limited to just 256 colours, compared to around16 million possible colours in a JPEG image. This gives GIFs a grainy look full of unrealistic colours.

You probably know GIFs for their ability to animate, but originally GIFs were only static images. The animation function was added several years later.

Apart from being fun to create and share with your friends, GIFs are also good for storing simple graphics with sharp edges and basic colours in a small file size.

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Raw formats:

When taking photos with a digital camera, using a raw image format means the image only goes through a tiny amount of processing and compression. This gives you more options when it comes to editing and correcting your photos later.

There are many raw formats, and it depends on what type of camera or device you are using. The huge range of formats means that many programmes or websites might not be able to support them. Raw files are also much larger than other image files, making them difficult to share online.

For the best images, take photos using a raw image file on your camera first, and make changes and edits to the image later using photo editing software. You can then export the file into a format that is much smaller and easier to share online, like a JPEG.

Edited by Charlotte Ames-Ettridge

Presentations without visuals are like sleeping pills. Who would want to read lines and lines of boring text? I would say no one.

I recently gave a presentation about communication to a few team members from our production team. My presentation was filled with text in bullet points.

When I started my presentation, the team was all pumped up before the meeting, and 15 minutes into it, you could see yawning and fidgeting.

After the meeting, the feedback I got was as expected – "The presentation was so dull and boring", "I wish it was explained in a more elaborate way that I could relate to".

My bad.

I am sure, we all have been through a non-visual presentation and we were ready to drop dead!

Now, what are the elements that can make our presentations eye-catching and visually attractive? Animations, illustrations, transitions, icons, images, graphics.

Images can make our presentations beautiful. They add emphasis to our presentations and make them livelier.

The only problem is figuring out which image format we should choose.

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Picking the right image is one thing, but selecting the right image format is another.

In this article, I will be talking more about image formats and how to pick the right one for your presentation.

Here are the Top 5 Image Formats

Each of these formats is not the same. They have their unique features with advantages and disadvantages.

Let’s look at them.

JPEG

JPEG or Joint Photographic Experts Group is the most popular among all image formats used on the web. JPEG files are lossy, which means that when the original image is saved as a JPEG file, the image size is reduced, and a lot of information is discarded. The quality is also lost.

The JPEG format is a popular choice for PowerPoint.

PROS

• Wide 16 million colors range
• Most commonly used and widely accepted image format
• Compatible with many Operating Systems

CONS

• Tend to discard data
• Cannot be animated
• Do not support transparency

GIF

Graphics Interchange Format is a bitmap image format that is popularly known for its size. It is relatively small in comparison to other image types. They are the most widely used form of communication. But they are not a form we would recommend for PowerPoint.

GIF has an 8-bit palette with only 256 colors.

PROS

• Minimal animation effects
• Supports transparency
• It is Lossless which means that every single bit of data that was originally in the file remains after being uncompressed and no data is lost
• Images with limited colors look great in GIF format

CONS

• Larger file size than PNG
• Limited colors, 256 varieties only

BMP

BMP files or bitmap image is a raster graphics image file format used to store bitmap digital images. They are image files within the Microsoft Windows operating system.

The images are rich in color, high in quality and compatible with all Windows OS and programs.

BMP files are made of millions of dots called ‘pixels’ and they can be 8-bit, 16-bit or 24-bit images.

PROS

• Compatible with Windows programs and Operating System

CONS

• Because of its large file size, it is not web-friendly
• Lags in comparison to other image formats
• Does not scale or compress well

TIFF

TIFF or Tag Image File Format is the perfect image format for page layout, publishing, and photo manipulation software.

TIFF images are crisp in quality and rich in colors. They are flexible and can be lossy or lossless.

They are supported by many imaging programs. However, they are not the best format for PowerPoint. But they can be converted into JPEG, PNG, and other formats that best fit PowerPoint.

PROS

• High-quality image format
• Flexible format that supports several types of compression like JPEG, LZW, ZIP and can be sent without compression
• Rich in color and can be saved in layers

CONS

• The file size is very large hence longer transfer/loading time and huge disk space consumption.

PNG

PNG or Portable Network Graphics is an image format specifically designed for the web. PNG is similar to GIF format. It is saved with 256 colors maximum, but it saves the color information more efficiently than GIF. It also supports 8-bit transparency. It is also best suited for PowerPoint.

PROS

• Supports transparency better than GIF
• PNG often creates smaller file sizes than GIF format
• Lossless

CONS

• If the images are large, they tend to generate a very large file, sometimes creating larger files than JPEG
• Does not support animation
• Not compatible with all web browsers

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Choosing the right format for the right project will have impactful results on clarity and visibility. Especially when you are presenting to a crowd of more than 100 people, you have to be smart about images.

If it is a reading Presentation and you have to share it with a number of people via email or file sharing, then it’s best to use light images like PNG.

Knowing the different image formats will help you weigh in the file size, the color range and compatibility to help you decide which is the best fit for your presentation.

Do not forget why you are adding images to your presentation in the first place.

Do’s & Don’ts When Using Images In Your PowerPoint Slides

Including graphics elements to your presentations is not to make them just visually appealing but also to convey the presentation’s message effectively.

Be smart when deciding what your image should convey. Keeping a random image in a slide without giving any thought on what the content conveys is pointless. It may even lead to confusion for your audience.

On the other hand, getting the right image that relates to the content can do wonders. It simply paints the message conveyed clearer.

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