Which aspect ratio gives the worst quality. Photo and picture formats. Entropy coding algorithms

Hello dear friends. Today we'll talk about which image format is better to use on the site, what formats are available today graphic files for the site and whether you need to chase the latest graphic formats.

I get a lot of such questions, many of my students ask if they can use the new SVG and WebP formats, and where it is better to apply these images. Of course, you can use new formats as well, but you need to understand which format is best suited for what.

Thanks to good application The image management process becomes easier the more you do. A lot of stress can be avoided if you let your computer do as much of the work as possible. After all, what are computers for? They think of tedious stuff to save you. The applications we will be looking for spend most of the time building and maintaining indexes of image files. Rather than grouping the actual files into appropriate categories, an image organizer app keeps track of where your image files are located and allows you to create indexes, collections, and image sets by manipulating the indexes.

Today the images on the site are an integral part. From graphic design to uploading images to articles, graphics accompany most sites on the web. But beauty comes at a price

Non-optimized images are one of the factors that slow down the site, as indicated by the verification services.

It looks like you can see that your image files are rearranged and reordered on the screen, but in reality you just see the previews displayed according to the index that you and the application create. The original files remain where they were placed.

The bridge is not like the organizers and image editors we'll be looking at. This is great for viewing images - especially if you've already sorted and filed them in an organized way, but doing the initial organization is a bit tedious. Your camera should have come with an application to handle importing and organizing photos. There are other applications available from alternative sources that often do better job... We'll look at some of the application options later.

Therefore, you will always be faced with the choice of which format to choose for the image. Its size and quality will depend on this. And to use smaller images without losing quality, there are a few things you need to know.

What images do I use for websites today?

All images for websites are subdivided:

The first step in organizing is importing images into the application. You may be given the option to scan the entire application HDD and search for images in the catalog. This can be time consuming and can result in a large number of images found that you do not want to catalog. It can also help you find this image that you lost a few projects ago. If your hard drives is a disorganized mess of folders with no real plan, a full check might be a good idea.

raster (example - JPG, JPEG, GIF, PNG),
vector (example - SVG).

Raster images are made up of pixels that store the color and transparency value. Such formats are images in articles, buttons, icons and design elements. These images are popular with developers and website owners. The main disadvantage bitmaps- they don't scale well.

You can always remove unwanted images from the application later. If you are given the option to move all the files to be cataloged into one folder, you should think about it. Image files can be easily backed up as you know from your backup habit. Dragging just one folder to another drive is easier than searching and dragging many. In case you need to recover files from backup, sharing them will speed up the move, and make index and preview rebuilds easier and faster.

That is, when you increase the size of the picture, there is a loss of quality.

Vector images are composed of lines and route points. Information about an image is stored in mathematical drawing instructions, which allows such images to be scaled as much as desired without loss of quality.

How files are sorted in a folder is slightly less important. Once you've saved them, you'll almost always use your new image organizer to find and work with them. Most apps store them in subfolders by date by default, which is a good idea too.

Once everything is imported into the app, it's time to move on to working with image tags and ratings. Images should have dates and times when they were attached to them, and they will likely be sorted chronologically. Photos of any event should be grouped this way, so it's a good place to add keywords. Birthdays, Christmas holidays, holidays, and soon they should all be marked as such. Places should be named if important.

All of these images can and are used on modern websites. You just need to understand that before uploading to the site,!

Description of popular image formats for the site

From the description of these formats, you will understand where and what format is best used on the site.

Jpeg

JPEG or JPG is one of the most popular image formats for websites. The format supports millions of colors, which gives it a leading position in the presentation of photos and images on the site.

You can select multiple images and use the same keywords for all. As long as you add names and places and other keywords, you should find a way to rate the images. You can use ratings different ways... Five star images can be selected for easy viewing or downloading of your best stuff. The point of all this tagging and rating is that the organizing app can find and sort your photos using the tags and metadata included during the shoot.

If, for example, you are filtering your entire collection of photos by date, focal length, keyword and the name of the subject and only show five star photos, finding your favorite photo of your baby on his birthday, shooting with your best lens will be much easier.

Images in this format are optimized quite well with practically no loss of quality, which allows you to get a smaller file without visual loss of quality. It should be remembered that each subsequent optimization reduces the quality.

Files of this format are supported by all devices and browsers, which once again confirms its popularity and allows you not to worry about display problems on sites.

For further organization, you can create collections or albums. The names differ depending on the application, but the concept is the same. A collection is a list of photos, much like a playlist in a media player app. Filtering and sorting functions can create groups of images associated with common data. Collections allow you to create groups based solely on how you want to group them together. Most apps also have the ability to create smart albums.

Entropy coding algorithms

You define a set of rules that tell the app what you want to collect — for example, images with a rating of 4 or higher taken between the start and end dates of your last vacation — and it will collect images that meet the criteria into a collection.

The big disadvantage of this format is the lack of transparency. That is, it will not work to combine images in this format. For such tasks, it is better to use the following format.

PNG image

This format uses a lossless compression algorithm. In terms of the number of colors and the level of transparency, it is available in two types, 8 and 24-bit. Both support transparency.

The only photos that were destroyed at this point are those where the flash did not fire, or the entire scene is blurred due to focus or movement issues. This keeps everything for each project in one place and makes it easier to manage the end product. Your camera no doubt came with an image management and editing app included. There are many applications on the market. One of them will almost certainly suit your style and needs, but almost all of them allow free trials.

Which format to choose

It would be foolish not to check some of them. Until you find one that suits you, it would be wise to stick with the manufacturer's offer. This is something that you can be absolutely sure is compatible with the files your camera creates when shooting raw. If so, there are some free options that are almost as good as the expensive ones - perhaps better, depending on your taste. Some of them include features that are not available in expensive packages. Designed with the needs of the novice user at the consumer level in mind, some features are simplified or more automated than professional-oriented applications.

8-bit is not very popular, but 24-bit is widely used for various images on the site. Due to transparency, it allows you to create combined images. It is often used to create animated buttons, icons, where a transparency effect is needed.

PNG images can be optimized many times, edited - it will retain the original quality.

Some of the additional automatic functions go beyond some loss of flexibility, but value for money is hard to beat. Somewhere in the box your camera came in was probably a disc full of software which you barely noticed at the time. That drive almost certainly had an application that imports and organizes images from your camera. Most of these apps made by camera companies are great for small photo collections, and if you're already satisfied with the way you work, by all means keep using it.

The format is also supported by all browsers and devices to ensure that it is displayed on any screen.

The quality of the images looks better than JPG, but the file weight will be higher. This must be taken into account when placing files on the site.

GIF

It is an 8-bit format that supports 256 colors, transparency, and animation. Due to the support of a small number of colors, the file weight is also minimal.

Common image formats

If you have a little more power or flexibility than what came with your camera, you may already have everything you need. The feature set for all three is very similar. Everyone can search your computer to find images wherever they hide, and if you choose, move them to a more central location. They all support the addition of tags, tags, and ratings, with which they can search and sort. Everyone can create collections of images, upload to photo sharing sites on the site, and manage printing, sending by e-mail and backup images.

The format is not suitable for photographs and images with a wide range of colors.

But it is widely used when creating banners, buttons, icons, and so on.

In modern sites, this format is used less and less.

Next, let's talk about the relatively recent SVG and WebP formats, which are not so popular, but are gaining popularity and support, and are the best suited to the requirements of loading speed and site responsiveness.

Plus, they can all associate names with individuals in your images. Although not 100% more accurate, it can significantly speed up tagging. large catalog and is a nice flashy trick to show your friends. Images must be uploaded to your online albums before the people in them can be identified. However, these are all very efficient editors, and they can all save and export images in suitable formats for uploading and sharing, even if you need to use another application or an online upload form to make the upload to your site of your choice. ...

SVG

It is an XML-based vector file format. The format began to gain popularity quite recently, as it was previously poorly supported in browsers. And due to display issues, no one was in a rush to use it.

Today SVG is supported by all modern browsers. But, there are still problems with display.

At the other end of the price range are those applications that are aimed at the professional user. The biggest difference lies in their attitude to the workflow and how they try to balance creative freedom with effective work. It is divided into five modules: Library, Development, Slideshow, Print, and Internet. As you can see in the image below, the photos are imported into the library, where they can be viewed, tagged, rated, and taken in collections. In each module, commands, controls and functions are laid out on the side panels in the best sequence to accomplish these tasks in the image: big changes at the top, small adjustments at the bottom.

This format is most commonly used for simple images such as logos, design elements, and so on. Not applicable for photographs.

The SVG format is lightweight, scales well, provides crisp images at any screen resolution, supports animation, can be manipulated via CSS and placed in HTML, reducing the number of requests.

Aperture is a little more flexible in its approach to document flow. The display shown below is divided into three panes: a file browser that displays thumbnails of images in the library; a file viewer that displays the currently selected images; and a file information inspector panel, a set of controls for navigating projects, viewing and editing metadata, and making adjustments. The Adjustments tab contains all the editing controls.

The main view remains the same, although each of the three components can be turned on and off to provide more screen space for the others. An independent valet and programmer, he develops them as a hobby and releases them through his blog. You can fit a ten megapixel photo in less than a megabyte without losing a lot of quality. The original camera image is slightly larger. Depending on your sensor, it could be ten megabytes, maybe a little more.

WebP

Open format source code, developed by Google specifically for the internet. Today YouTube uses WebP video thumbnail conversion.

The format provides superior compression and maintains transparency. It combines the advantages of JPG and PNG formats without increasing file size.

But despite the advantages of the format, it is not supported by all browsers, such as IE, Edge, Firefox and Safari.

There are ways to work around these limitations, but they prevent the format from being used universally.

Conclusion

Friends, I hope I explained everything clearly, and now you know which image format is better to use on the site, and why I do not insist on using one particular format, but recommend an integrated approach.

Perhaps when WebP gains widespread support, we will all switch to it and replace jpg and png on our sites.

Let's discuss in the comments what formats you use on your sites, what you like and what you don't like.

For today I have everything, I am waiting for your comments.

Best regards, Maxim Zaitsev.

Photos and pictures differ from each other not only in content, but also in other "computer" characteristics. For example, in size.

It so happens that, like, two identical patterns, but one has three times the size of the other.

Also, the images differ in quality. I think you have seen photos of extremely poor quality more than once. This can be seen with the naked eye. For example, two identical photos, but one of the best quality, and the other of the worst.

And it so happens that the picture seems to lack colors. Here's an example.

And the file format or type is responsible for all this.

Actually, images come in a wide variety of formats. And there are a lot of them. We will not consider all of them, but talk about the most common ones. These are formats such as bmp, gif, jpg, png, tiff.

They differ from each other, first of all, in quality. And the quality differs in the number (saturation) of colors.

For example, I paint a picture using different colors. And then suddenly some of them ended, and we have to finish painting with what we have. Of course, I will try to do everything possible so that this does not greatly affect the result, but all the same, the picture will not turn out the same as I would like - more faded, blurred.

So it is with image formats. One leaves all the colors, the other cuts off part. And, it happens, because of this, the picture deteriorates.

This is a rather crude example. In fact, everything is somewhat more complicated there, but I think you have caught the main thing.

Common image formats

BMP is a format for drawings made in Paint. It can be used to store the drawn pictures on the computer. But this type of file is not used on the Internet due to its large size. So if you want to post a picture drawn in Paint on a blog or social network, it must be of a different type - gif, jpg or png.

GIF is a popular image format on the Internet. In it you can save them without loss of quality, but with a limited number of colors - 256. GIF gained particular popularity due to the fact that you can create small animated (moving) pictures in it.

JPG is a format of photos and pictures with a lot of colors. It can save an image both without loss of quality and with loss.

PNG is a modern picture format. This type of image is obtained in a small size and without loss of quality. Very convenient: the file is small and the quality is good. It also supports transparency.

TIFF - images are very good quality, without compression. Accordingly, the size of such files is huge. TIFF is used when the quality is great importance... For example, when creating business cards, brochures, magazine covers.

Which format to choose

BMP - if this is a drawing made in Paint, and you are going to keep it only in the computer.
GIF - if an animation or drawing with a small amount of colors for publication on the Internet.
PNG - if it is a drawing with many colors or some transparent parts.
JPG (jpeg) - if photo.
TIFF - an image for printing (business cards, brochures, posters, etc.).