What is a JPEG?
JPEG is actually nothing more than an acronym for Joint Photographic Experts Group. This group was tasked with the development of a standard digital image format for compression of either full-colour or grey-scale digital images of "natural", real-world scenes.
JPEG compression is inherently lossy, which means that some detail is always lost when the compression level is increased. This also affects how an image will look when it is compressed.
- Photographic images with naturally fuzzy edges generally do not suffer much visual loss of quality with a compression level of 40 or higher.
- Graphical images with straight lines, such as those created with Paint or PhotoShop, will definately suffer from quality loss when set to a compression level of 60 or lower.