JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group)
A popular bit-map file format for photos and other images.
JPEG supports millions of colors unlike GIF (which is limited to only 256 colors). JPEG renders color graphics with a high degree of color fidelity and is 24-bit capable.
The number of colors actually displayed depends on your monitor and video card (16-bit graphics supports 65,500 colors and 24-bit enables over 16 million).
JPEG files can be compressed but only by lossy compression, where the smaller the file is compressed, the more the color information will be degraded. Sometimes artifacts or noise appear in JPEG photos that are overly compressed then re-sized larger. GIF, PNG, and vector graphics don’t have this problem.
See RGB.