Comments on: GIF vs JPG – Which is Better?

By: louise

louise — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 07:22:42 +0000

For awhile I thought i had to agree with their contradictions.
But again you homed in your point. Thanks a lot, Tim!
Keep ‘em coming!

By: tim

tim — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 22:10:59 +0000

David: The next tutorial that I’m going to post is regarding PNGs & GIFs and the reason why as of right now GIF is the only truly compatible way to use transparency with the web because PNGs are so large and the gradual transparency isn’t supported in ie6 without hacks.

And if you had read the full post you’d realize that with gif you can change the color of the matte the alpha channel uses with gif to closely match the colors that will be behind the image such as I have done with the top graphic. Thus eliminating the “white pixels” making them usable in a small niche.

If you had read the entire article rather than just the title you might have known that.

By: David Sparks

David Sparks — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 22:01:02 +0000

no offense.. but the title of this thread is all I read and needed to read as i find it a completely useless conversation.

Gif’s are made for solid color images. no gradients etc.

Jpeg’s are made for pictures. Peoples faces, landscapes etc.

so obviously you should be using them for those situations.. the image quality in the gif is considerably poorer than the jpeg.. bc again thats what jpegs are for.

if you really wanted to debate image format you should be debating gif which is dying vs png8 which is far more superior and is designed for both solid color representation and gradients. it also typically has a smaller file size. the only time i would ever use a gif anymore is for the simple transparency and low file size it does but its not true alpha so you get the white pixels making them have a very small niche use.

so in the context of this post which starts off false… jpeg is superior. you can see it in the image quality.

By: Fred

Fred — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 20:51:43 +0000

GIF and JPG aren’t the same and shouldn’t be compared.

If more than 256 colors, use JPG. If not, always use GIF (size matters people).

IE6 doesn’t support PNG and PNG fixes SLOW the site BIG TIME. PNG makes larger images than GIF’s.

By: tim

tim — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 19:48:04 +0000

John:

Our next article is on transparency and it covers PNG transparency. It’ll be up tomorrow!

By: Pierre

Pierre — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 18:27:22 +0000

Whaaa! Somebody’s still using GIF!

No, honestly though, I wouldn’t recommend GIF to my worst enemy… Use PNG instead! The 8 bits PNG is at least similar to GIF (except it’s an open format, making it even better anyway), and the 24 bits is amazingly great with its 256 levels of transparency…

Moreover, Firefox 3 supports APNG, the Animated version of PNG. Check it out: http://animatedpng.com/

By: John

John — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 17:13:17 +0000

Couple things – 1) Where’s the mention of PNG? PNG-8 is VERY often a much smaller and better looking alternative to GIF, and it is supported in all modern browsers. PNG also allows you to select your own palette for better support of images with small numbers of unique colors. PNG24 is the only usable format for alpha transparency (and would be even easier to use if M$ were less of a d-bag conglomeration). I find that many many many times, PNG is a far superior format to GIF in theory and practise. 2) GIF isn’t the only format that supports animation – try MNG! (yes, I know, useless as nothing supports it, but it’s out there…).

By: Sean

Sean — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 16:40:07 +0000

Don’t forget only GIFs support animation

By: tim

tim — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 20:00:49 +0000

I think the title of the post is a bit misleading perhaps, it should be something more like, “Which is better in each scenario, gif vs jpg”, but that would have been too long.

By: Elrond Hubbard

Elrond Hubbard — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 16:05:47 +0000

This isn’t a case of “one is better than the other.” The two compression schemes were created with entirely different purposes in mind. The main difference between the two is the way in which the data is compressed. The basic rule of thumb is this:
If it’s a photograph, use JPG.
If it’s a graphic, use GIF. (or PNG)
JPG doesn’t support transparency and is lossy (you’ll see artifacts of the compression is too high) but it can generate a wider range of colors.
A GIF will limit the number of colors, but it’s lossless and can have transparencies.