catcode.com > Guide to Images > Wrong Format Choice

The “Wrong Choice”

Art with Few Colors Saved as JPEG

This is not a total disaster in terms of file size, but image quality may very well suffer, as you can see below:

geometric forms w. gradient colors
GIF file size: 5,693 bytes
geometric forms w. gradient colors
JPEG file size: 7,487 bytes

Photos Saved as GIF

This is always a lose-lose situation; you lose quality when your color range is reduced from 16 million plus down to 256, and the file size will almost always become much, much larger.

Following are closeups of the balloon; the one at the left is the JPEG, and the one at the right is from the same photo stored as a GIF. Note the loss of quality in the lower image.

closeup of colored balloons JPEG closeup of colored balloons GIF

Below are thumbnails of two photos saved both as GIF and JPEG, along with the file sizes of the full-size pictures. Notice the explosion in file size that comes with a bad choice of format.

dragon with balloons
837 x 765 pixels
JPEG file: 128,286 bytes
GIF file: 334,163 bytes
Prof. Roberta Stock
367 x 361 pixels
JPEG file: 36,698 bytes
GIF file: 99,488 bytes
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