The most common image formats.

In this article, the following image file extensions will be explained:

GIF
.gif is the most popular format when it comes to a sequence of images that form an animation, but it is limited in terms of colors. From a set of 16 million colors, the .gif file can only use 256.
.gif is used for a short animation that does not involve many colors.

JPG 
This is the reason why JPG is the preferred image format on the Internet. You can store a lot of .JPG files on a relatively small storage device, as the file sizes of JPG are small, applying a fairly high compression natively. You can also use JPG to obtain high-resolution images, used for web images and images without text.

TIFF
The TIFF format is a large image file. It is uncompressed and can be used as a lossless or lossy image depending on the applied compression.
It is commonly used to obtain high-resolution images that will be printed in large format. This type of format stores all the information from the initial capture while also being very versatile in its graphic processing.

PNG
They are Lossless formats (lossless compression), which means you can edit the image without loss of quality. This is why .png is the most commonly used for logos, icons, and images with transparent backgrounds.

AI
It is an image format created by Adobe. The property of AI files is to preserve the details of the image even at maximum zoom.
This format is used when creating a new project because files are easy to share for editing.

Webp
It is a modern image format created and developed by Google, aimed at simplifying image loading so that they can be loaded as quickly as possible.
Commonly found on blog-type websites.

PSD
Stores all the information identified in the image. The size of a PSD document can be up to 300,000 X 300,000 pixels. The displayed document size can be extended up to 2 GB.
It is especially used for printing and graphic editing.

RAW
It is the first format for creating images. This type of image is uncompressed, in the original form of the image capture. The format is not supported by every type of device. It is primarily found in the photographic environment, being the basic format of professional cameras. This type of file contains all the details of the capture, offering a very wide range of editing possibilities. It does not apply to the web (www), but it can store complete image data.

VECTOR IMAGES
Vector images do not lose quality when enlarged and are responsive. That is why elements and logos are in vector image format. For example, SVG and AI.

RASTER IMAGES
Raster images are types of pixelated image files. Made up of different pixels, raster images become blurry as we increase the size of the images. Most images we see on the internet and in daily life are raster images. For example: .Gif, .Jpg, .Png.

IMAGE COMPRESSION can be of two types:

Lossless compression: lossless compression means that no data is lost during the image compression process. You can reduce the file size without losing data and image quality. The .Png and .Gif extensions are lossless.

Lossy Compression: In lossy compression, you lose some of the data (pixels) of the images permanently. You cannot go back and will not have the original image back. .Jpg images are the ones that can be lossy compressed.

Image Metadata: information about the image is usually hidden inside the image. We call it metadata. This stores information such as the type of camera used, time, location, author, type of lens, focal length, exposure time, etc.