Graphic Standards - Graphics

andrew.white@shetland.uhi.ac.uk (Andy White) wrote in message news:<94a3bb83.0402030205.fb44860@posting.google.com>...
> Hi
> I am quite new to this graphics business.
> Could someone please enlighten me as to the differences between
>
> GIF JPEG PNG
>
> and why do they think one is better.
>
> Thanks
>
> Andy

GIF:
lossless compression
256 colors
binary transparency
software developers must pay patent royalties to UniSys in some
countries until June 2004

JPEG
lossy compression
16 million colors
no transparency
highly efficient compression of "natural" images
doesn't handle sharp edges well

PNG
lossless compression
16 million colors (or more!)
256-level transparency (but MSIE doesn't handle it properly)
good compression of "graphic" images

Visit www.libpng.org/pub/png to learn more about PNG.

Glenn