What file format do you use for online?

[iriairi]

This is not trying to start another RAW vs JPG thread. I just purchased a smugmug account and was wondering what format people use for their smugmug, zenfolio accounts and why...

 

[fwellers]

I'm using fine jpg, but probably should be using tiff since the storage is unlimited on zenfolio.
You can't put raw up there, as there would be nothing to read it and render the pictures.

 

[Katier]

I use png. I used to use jpg but I think png looks better.

 

[TheSon]

x2 for png. It's an easy format and looks good with font and pictures.

If you use TIFF, they'll take a looooong time to load since the files are so big.

 

[chrisburke]

x3 for png

 

[tirediron]

I use .jpg for a couple of reasons. (1) It's as close to universal as anything right now, (2) It's easy to work with, resize, etc, and (3) Even at web-quality (75dpi) it still looks good on-line, but is sufficiently quality-reduced to negate the concern of image-grabbing.

 

[iriairi]

Thanks for all the replies. I was leaning towards PNG (but wanted unbiased opinions) and was curious as to others reasons for choosing this or another format.

 

[Katier]

The BIG benefit of PNG over JPG is it's lossless. This means the quality is higher than JPG because the compression of JPF will allways lose some quality.

Also png supports alpha channels ( not usually important for photographs but handy to know ) jpg doesn't.

 

[epp_b]

If we're talking about what gets displayed in your browser window, you only have three options, or two practical ones.

GIF can only display 256 colours, so that's not even an option.

PNG is great and it has lossless compression, but you better hope that all of your customers have fast connections and that you can afford the throughput bills.

JPG is still the best balance. Even at low compression, the file sizes are reasonable and artifacting is unnoticeable for real photos.

 

[Josh66]

For online posting, I use JPG.

 

[Katier]

While png files are bigger, it's hardly an issue. Hell a 800x600png is only half a meg in size. Sites rarely use that size, let alone bigger.