Format type — Bitmap

Operating systems — Windows

The JPEG format stores high–quality 24-bit photographic quality images. However, JPEG is a lossy compression format, potentially discarding data during the encoding process. An image compressed by a lossless method is guaranteed to be identical to the original uncompressed image.

JPEG does not define a common file interchange format to store and transport JPEG data between computer platforms and operating systems. JPEG provides a compression method that is capable of compressing continuous-tone image data with a pixel depth of 6 to 24 bits. Unlike other compression formats, JPEG is not a single algorithm. JPEG consists of many compression methods that may be altered. JPEG can be adjusted to produce high quality compressed images that are much smaller than the original uncompressed data. It may also be used to produce very small compressed images that are of low quality in appearance but may be used in many different applications.