Image File Formats

Updated 24 Sep 2026

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What it is
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  specifications for storing or exchanging encoded iamge content
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Common formats
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  PNG - lossless raster format; supports transparency and several pixel
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  JPEG - commonly used for lossy photographic compression; ordinary JPEG images do not provide an alpha channel
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  TIFF - flexible raster container supporting different representations and compression choices
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  GIF - palette-based raster format supporting animation and limited transpaer
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  BPM - raster format commonly associated with comparatively direct pixel storage, through variants differ
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  SVG - XML-based vector graphics format that can also embed raster content
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Caution
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  filename extensions are labels, not reliable validation of a file's actual encoding
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  a file format is different from a color model, bit depth, or pixel-array layout
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Related
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  Raster Image
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  Vector Graphics

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