I have images for my ecommerce store in different formats. Wondering which format should I use for better quality? Is there some sort of recommendation?
It really depends on your use case and requirements.
png format
- It supports transparency, which makes it suitable for logos, graphics on a transparent background, or images with sharp edges (like text in an image)
- It also supports lossless compression, which means no loss of detail or visual quality
- The file sizes are generally high because of how information is stored in PNG format.
jpg format
- It doesn’t support transparency at all
- Only lossy compression is supported, but it can bring down the image size significantly, meaning every time you open and re-save a JPEG image, there will be some loss in details
- The algorithm is more suited to store photographic images with a lot of details and colors (unlike logos or graphics, which often use a lesser number of colors)
- The file sizes are small.
Therefore, “better quality” is tied to your use case.
- PNG is suitable for logos, images with text, graphics, etc.
- JPEG is suitable for photographs, product images, and user-upload pictures that don’t need transparency, and you want to get them to a small size while maintaining decent visual quality
If you have a PNG that doesn’t require transparency, ImageKit may automatically convert it to JPG if you turn on the auto-format setting in the dashboard or use f-auto
parameter in the URL. You can read about this here - Image optimization