File type and image compression
JPEG images, usually denoted by the file extention '.jpg' means Joint Photographic Expert Group. The term was born when a group of scientists, programmers and engineers got together and came up with a new standart for file storage that would allow images from different programs to be interchangeable, so that a picture from one computer could be viewed on another without having to usr file conversion programs. The JPEG is an ideal format for storing pictures on a digital camera because it uses something called file compression. This is a technicque that allows a large number of images to be stored in a relatively small amount of memory by squashing the files so they take up less room. For this reason JPEG has become the standart image file format for all digital cameras.
JPEG compression reduces file size by reducing picture quality, and for this reason it is called 'lossy' storage. For most purposes this quality reduction is imperceptible and fine for day-to-day use, but for maximum image quality there are other types of image file which are uncompressed and loose no quality, the most common one being TIFF, which stands for 'Tagged Image File Format'.
