Common Image Formats in Digital Cameras

One of the most direct ways to capture an image is a digital camera which uses a special semiconductor chip called a CCD (charge coupled device) to convert light to electrical signals right at the image plane. The quality of the images created in this manner is closely related to the number of pixels the CCD can capture.

The most common image file formats, the most important for cameras, printing, scanning, and internet use, are JPG, TIF, PNG, GIF, and BMP.

Digital cameras and web pages normally use JPG (Joint Photographic Experts Group)files - because JPG heroically compresses the data to be very much smaller in the file. However, JPG uses lossy compression to accomplish this feat, which is a strong downside. A smaller file, yes, there is nothing like JPG for small, but this is at the cost of image quality.

TIF (Tagged Image File Format) is lossless, which is considered the highest quality format for commercial work.

GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) was designed by CompuServe in the early days of computer 8-bit video, before JPG, for video display at dial-up modem speeds.

PNG (Portable Network Graphics) can replace GIF today (web browsers show both), and PNG also offers many options of TIF too.

Camera RAW files are very important of course, but RAW files must be processed into regular formats (JPG, TIF, etc) to be viewable and usable in any way.

BMP file format (Windows bitmap) handles graphics files within the Microsoft Windows OS. Typically, BMP files are uncompressed, and therefore large and lossless; their advantage is their simple structure and wide acceptance in Windows programmes.