What Is A Digital Photo JPEG File?
Digital photos are preferred for their quality and clarity. This article shows, how a JPEG file format(or JPG in short) helps in storing or compressing of the digital photo images.
A digital photo image has some distinct advantages, such as clarity, better picture quality and luminance. As such, there arises a need for a format, to store these images. Presently, digital photos are converted into image files and are stored on memory cards or computer hard disks. Different file formats are available, to store such digital images. Some of these formats have the facility to compress the image, to fit within a limited storage space with minimum distortion. JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) is much-preferred format used for storage of digital photos.
Why digital photos need to be converted into a file format
A digital photo will be transferred from one platform to another for different purposes—simply to transfer the image from your camera to your PC, from one PC to another, or for taking a printout of that image from a printer. Most of these platforms require a file format in terms of bytes, and not pixels. First, let us see, how a digital image is formed.
Now as a digital image is made up of pixels and each pixel has 3 bytes, it is clear that the number of bytes will be three times the number of pixels of that image. The number of bytes thus becomes so big, making it difficult for any operation. Therefore, it is necessary to reduce the size of the file of that image. The obvious answer to this problem is compression of the contents of the file, with minimum of graphical or clarity distortion. This is where a JPEG application proves helpful.
JPEG Compression
JPEG files are found to be extremely efficient for compression of digital photo images. Certain methods are employed in JPEG files, that take advantage of some specific features of digital photo images. There are certain distinct features of the digital photo image technology that makes the images superior in their picture quality. JPEG files employ certain methods that make optimal use of these specific features of digital photo technology for an efficient representation of pixels, while compressing.
Certain standardization is brought to the process of compression that helps retain most of the features, such as color, brightness, tone, etc., and keeps the image intact, maintaining a sense of proportion. Hence, there is minimum distortion of the compressed image. A variety of levels of compression is available in JPEG formats. Basically, the three levels, which are low, medium, and high—give compression at three reciprocal levels, i.e., a low compression gives least distortion but bigger size, whereas a high compression gives small file size, but an image that would be noticeably different than the original digital image.
Digital photos are preferred for their quality of image and clarity. Using them in different mediums needs certain formats, that would help retain the special features, for which the digital photos are preferred. Overcoming the technical obstacles of such transfer of medium, JPEG file format has proved really a boon, for conversion of digital photo images.
