Full Form of JPEG

JPEG stands for Joint Photography Experts Group. This group is an organization that developed the JPEG image standard. It is a format in which images are being compressed. It is used in different devices like cameras for storing pictures. It is also called lossy image compression format due to the loss of image quality during the compression process.

Further, it was first proposed by Nasir Ahmed in 1972 and introduced on September 18, 1992. Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG), who created this format, consists of two organizations ISO international standardization organization and IES international electro technical commission. For developing the most efficient compression format, the organization has done many experiments on the transformation techniques, and finally, they got (DCT) Discrete Cosine Transform. It was as efficient as they want and in 1992, they made it public as a jpeg format.

Features of JPEG standards:-

  • It is the most accepted picture format. Several devices, mostly the cameras, used this format for picture compression.
  • Its ISO standard is, 10918 and it is a type of lossy image format.
  • It has 29 separate coding processes.
  • The main component of JPEG format is Discrete Cosine Transform. Nasir Ahmed was the first who suggested this picture compression technique in 1972.
  • Due to its varying levels of compression, it is ideal for web graphics.
  • It can compress 10:1 with a minor loss of image quality.
  • This image format can give varieties of colors made with RGB (Red, Green, and Blue) as they used eight bits from each color.
  • Its compression may reduce the file size by ten times without degradation in quality. However, sometimes at the time of compression, it can lose some information as well as the picture quality. So it is also called lossy compression format.
  • Its extension filenames are .jpg, .jpeg, .jpe, .jif, .jfif, .jfi.
  • In this format, during the process of compression, first, it compresses a picture into bytes and then, for giving a picture, decompresses it back.  
  • Its two subformat is JPEG/EXIF and JPEG JFIF. EXIF data provides us the setting of the device, focal length, flash on/off, ISO number, and many other functions too. It is the most common image form used by digital cameras. And JFIF provides the maximum picture size of 65,535x65, 535 pixels. It is used for World Wide Web.
  • It is used for sending photographs on the internet.
  • Generally, the function of this format is to store and edit the pictures.

Advantages of JPEG format

The advantages of JPEG format are as follows:

  • This format is suitable for storing digital photos.
  • In this format, images can be transferred easily.
  • This format supports all electronic devices, like; mobile, camera, computer, etc.
  • The format occupies a little space in comparison to other formats.
  • It supports all the hardware tools and all the browsers.
  • Jpeg format provides varieties of colors as well as is also used for graphic images.
  • In spite of the high level of reduction in file size, it maintains reasonable image quality.
  • Sharing JPEG images on the internet is quick and efficient.

Disadvantages of JPEG format

The disadvantages of JPEG format are as follows:

  • During the high-compression process for saving the image, the image becomes blocky. This is because, during compression, the image is divided into 8x8 blocks. Due to which many information is lost.
  • It does not support transparency.

So, overall, there are many image file formats for storing and sending images, but JPEG is the most popular and accessible format for all purposes.