Professional photographers or image editors often have mixed feelings about the use of JPG. On the one hand, they like this format because it doesn’t take too much space, it is easily compatible with any image viewer you can think of, on any type of device (including smartphones, tablets etc.), and it is the default format used by all image sharing websites, from Google to Facebook.
JPG and PNG are two of the most popular extensions for image files, but which one is the best? Some people prefer the JPG format because of its small size, because it is easy to upload online and it is compatible with any image viewer program you might have and with all photo sharing websites. However, JPG is a lossy compression format, which means it discards some of the encoding information of the image so as to ensure the file is not too large. This translates into poorer quality — including some image noise and possibly irregular shapes, which is relevant particularly if you plan to print the image or use it for graphics editing.
If you are a fan of Canon cameras, you probably have a bunch of CR2 images stocked on your computer. CR2 is the proprietary format of Canon cameras, used for creating RAW images. Or in other words, images that you can later edit using advanced graphics editing software. While this format might be OK to use if you are a professional designer and if you have Adobe Photoshop or other similar programs installed on your computer, transfer CR2 images, sending or posting them online might pose some problems.