Digital Image File Formats

Digital Image File Formats are the standardized file formats used to store a digital image, encoding pixel data in either a compressed or uncompressed form so that software can reliably read, display, and exchange pictures. This group gathers two of the most widely used raster image formats in computing history. JPEG, short for Joint Photographic Experts Group and sometimes retroactively called JPEG 1, is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly images produced by digital photography; its degree of compression is adjustable, trading storage size against image quality, and since its 1992 introduction it has become the most widely used image compression standard and digital image format in the world, with several billion JPEG images produced daily as of 2015. The Graphics Interchange Format, or GIF, is a bitmap image format developed by a team at the online services provider CompuServe led by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite and released on June 15, 1987. Both formats predate most later image formats and remain foundational to how digital images are stored and shared online.