JPG Format — What is Joint Photographic Experts Group?
JPEG is the most widely used image format for photographs and complex images. It uses lossy compression to achieve small file sizes while maintaining acceptable visual quality.
Extension
.jpg
Compression
Lossy
Transparency
No
MIME Type
image/jpeg
Pros & Cons
✅ Pros
- • Very small file sizes
- • Universal support
- • Adjustable quality/size ratio
- • Ideal for photographs
❌ Cons
- • Lossy compression
- • No transparency support
- • Quality degrades with re-saving
- • Not ideal for text/graphics
Best Use Cases
- Photographs
- Web images
- Social media
- Email attachments
Technical Details
JPEG uses Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) based compression. Quality can be adjusted from 0-100, with typical web usage at 75-85. It supports EXIF metadata for camera information.
History
JPEG was created by the Joint Photographic Experts Group in 1992. It quickly became the standard format for digital photography and web images.