Format options when saving a jpeg file

[jpiaget99]

What's the difference between "Baseline", "Baseline Optimized" and "Progressive" and what is each option best for?

[Akash Sharma · Accepted solution]

Hi  jpiaget,

Baseline Standard is used when you want your JPG to be recognizable to most web browsers. It's basic and, well.... standard! It makes the least amount of changes to your image. All web browsers support it.

Baseline Optimized optimizes the color quality of the image and produces a slightly smaller file size (2 to 8% - a little more compression, or slightly faster loading). All modern web browsers support it,

**Both Standard and Optimized produce good quality images, so it's really just a matter of choice."Baseline (Optimized)" might reduce file size slightly (2% or so), and might be incompatible with viewers using old technology. "Optimized" might produce better colours, but that might not be perceptable."Progressive"

Baseline Progressive creates an image that will display gradually as it's downloaded.means that the image is rendered as scan lines (like the old-fashioned TVs used) so that a browser will quickly show a reduced quality image of half the scan lines while it resolves the complete image.

Verdict Baseline Optimized is the best choice among all three.

You may see this  Overview of Image Formats and When To Use Each One

Remember that JPG is a "lossy" method of compressing image files -- it throws away image data before doing the compression, so set your "Quality" option to "Maximized". That is the key setting for image quality.

Else you should look for other Formats like Png

Hope that helps

~Akash

[Guest]

I'm looking for advice on this as well.  I'm editing my photos for high quality prints to frame and sell, mostly 8x10 and 11x14 sizes.  Your explanation is helpful but focuses on web.  What about for print?  Thanks!