what you should know

On the internet there are a lot of questions about JPG's and GIF's, such as which one is best, or what are they. Knowing which type of image you should use on your webpage is quite important, as they will help reduce file size if they are used properly.

facts and info

Both GIFs and JPGs are different types of image files capable of doing different things. A GIF uses a adaptive type palette, but they are only capable of reaching 256 colors. JPG images are much better in the color viewpoint, and are capable of using up to 16.7 million colors. GIFs can also be made to look transparent, so they blend in with your background better. GIF files can also be animated using the appropriate software.

which one to use, and when

This is quite possibly the hardest question there is to answer about graphics. When you are dealing with a small images that don't have *that* much color variation in them, use GIFs. When working with a large image with lots of color variations, you should probably use JPG. There are exceptions of course, but you will have to decide for yourself what to do then.

a few conflicts

Of course, if you want to make a transparent graphic, or a animation, you have to use a GIF. JPGs are unfortunately not capable of being transparent or animated. One more problem with JPGs, a person looking at them at 256 colors will see them *completely* different than a person viewing them at 16 bit color. One good thing about JPGs is that they can be saved at different quality settings. A setting of 'low' will be considerably smaller in file size than a setting of 'high'. Even on the setting of low, JPGs have far more colors than GIFs do.

various stuff

As most people know, JPGs usually save at a lower file size, unless the image is very small and has little color variation. JPGs have a slight tendency to look a bit blurred, whereas GIFs usually look clean and crisp. The choice is really up to you, in fact, try them both to see which one looks best with your webpage.