JPEGs can end up with very large file sizes, slowing down the load time for a web page. The longer a visitor has to wait to see the page, the more likely that they will give up on it, and move on.

The purpose of this page is to judge a graphic image, saved as a JPEG with 4 levels of compression. The more that you compress an image the more quality that is lost.

The image that I am using is a logo scanned from a business card as a high quality photographic TIFF. Adobe Photoshop was used to color and save the JPEGs. Although the logo uses very few colors, and only 216 colors are compatible with most operating systems. I have saved this image using 16.7 Million colors (32 bits), allowing for a more critical comparison.

Maximum quality, compression 1:8, 14.5K. Next we see high quality, compression 1:11, 11.1K

Medium quality, compression 1:14, 9.1K. And finally Low quality 1:15 compression 8.2K

The results are interesting. All 4 JPEGs appear very similar, but when I compare them to the GIFs, all 4 JPEGs show a marked improvement in the rendering of the texture in the dark gray area. Also the borders of that area don't have the ugly black lines that are all to visible in the GIFs.

The final choice is between the 8.2K JPEG, or the 2.3K GIF. I find the JPEG a much superior image, with better resolution. The very small difference in load time is well worth it. This is not the usual outcome for a graphic image. Normally graphics look fine as GIFs, but this one benefits from the continuous tones of a JPEG.

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