Choosing the right one from various next-gen image formats is key to your digital marketing success. Your photo is the first thing that gets a potential customer interested in your products. Responsive design and fluid images have made huge strides in website popularity, but some photos are not worth spending extra time on. So, you must choose the right image format for each type of content you publish. This article will show you how to pick between JPEG, PNG and WebP for various business needs.
How to Choose the Right Next-Gen Format for Your Images
Before choosing the right image format for your marketing purpose, here are the things you should consider.
1. Determine Your Use Case – Interactive or Static
If you want to use your images in an interactive setting, like on a website, you will need the right next-gen format. If you display them as still images, you can use JPGs and PNGs. You will also need to determine if you need transparency in your photos or not. If so, choose a file type that supports transparency like JPG, PNG and SVG.
2. Identify Devices on Which Images Will Be Used
The next step is to identify the devices on which you will use your images. If it is just for web use, you do not need to worry too much about file size. But the file size is important if you are creating images for print or other digital output. The smaller, the better. Once you know where to use your images, you can choose a format that suits those needs.
3. Choose the Type of Image That Makes Sense for the Application
If you are not sure what kind of format you should use, start by looking at your intended application. JPEG is best if you print your image on an inkjet printer. If you print it on a commercial offset press, then TIFF is the best option. And if you plan on making digital copies for web use, GIF or PNG might be a better fit.
4. Focus on Quality or Compression?
When choosing the next-gen image formats, it is important to remember what you want your image to do. If you are looking for maximum quality and do not care about file size, then JPEG is the right choice. However, if you are looking to reduce the size of your image but maintain the same level of quality, then JPEG is not the best option.
5. Do not Forget About Content Delivery Networks
Content delivery networks (CDNs) are a great way to speed up your website by serving your images from a server closer to the visitor. To ensure your CDN is working properly, you should test different image formats on the CDN and make sure they load at the same speed as your web server.
Conclusion
Ultimately, the file format and encoding method will depend on your needs as a designer and your specific workflow. This review should provide you with enough information to decide which one to use among all the next-gen image formats to use for your particular project.
