a. JPEG

JPEG stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group. It uses lossy compression technique i.e. information is lost from the original image when saved as JPEG file. Since JPEG discards most of the information, the size of JPEG file is usually small.

JPEG files are generally used for photographs on the web, because they create a small file that is easily loaded on webpage and also looks good.JPEG is used when small file size is more important than maximum quality.

Pros

• 24-bit color, with up to 16 million colors.
• Rich colors, great for photographs that needs fine attention to color details.
• Compatible in most OS.
• Most used and most widely accepted.

Cons:

• They tend to discard a lot of data.
• JPEG does not support transparency.

b. TIFF

TIFF stands for Tagged Image File Format. TIFF images create very large file sizes. Images are uncompressed and therefore contain a lot of detailed information.

It is extremely flexible in terms of color, it can be gray scale or CYMK for print or RGB for web. It is most common file type used in photo software (Photoshop) as well as page layout software (Quark & InDesign).

Pros:

• Very flexible file format.
• Supports several types of compression like JPEG, LZW, ZIP or compression at all.
• High Quality image format, all color and data information is stored.
• TIFF format can be saved with layers.

Cons: - Very large file size.

c. BMP

BMP stands for Bitmap files. The windows bitmap or BMP files are image files within the Microsoft windows OS. They are large and uncompressed. They are rich in color, high in quality, simple and compatible in al windows OS. They are also called as raster or paint images.

They are made of pixels with different colors and arrangement to come up with an image and pattern. It can be 8-bit, 16-bit or 24-bit image.

Pros :

• It works well with most windows programs and OS.
• It can be used as windows wallpaper.

Cons:

• It is not web-friendly, not compatible with all platforms.
• It does not scale or compress well.