The Economic Impact of .JPEG Technology

Nowadays we live in a world more connected than before where we are always looking for new ways to improve technology and communication and make it even faster. One “big” example of it is .JPEG format that basically is a compression method like a file format: This is the most common file format used by digital cameras (and most of the devices) as a file .JPG or JFIF and it can be used in different platforms like Internet or most of the software’s.

JPEG is a compression algorithm made by the Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) in 1986 in order to make a lossy compression format to digital photography that can be saved and shared easily making it the most popular compression format just because it’s really efficient and useful. It’s main function is encoding pictures to make them less “heavier” than the original files.

This format has increased the speed of processing in photography to different networks based on the Internet which is mainly a visual tool and it’s a great example of why is JPEG as popular as actually it is: We are talking about a format that is easy to use in order to work on literally every device, so everyone has an access to it and work in an easy way.

Currently  there are not only many devices that work with this format, also software’s like Photoshop to modify it as whatever we want. In summary, the user can take a picture, edit it and share with the world in just some minutes or even seconds!.

We can find that there are other formats that work with .JPEG, for example the .GIF format that basically is conformed by many .JPEG files so compressed that are shown one behind the other creating an animation.  This kind of ideas has been improving this tool called Internet, making it even more useful and attractive for us, the users. It’s possible thanks by the graphic industry that have been researching and working to make files with as much information as possible to keep the quality as high as possible. Since multimedia everything changed, the printed and digital formats have changed the industry in many ways at the point  to find a way to encode those “big” to make them able to be shareable with the rest of the world in less time than before.

JPEG has become so popular, at the point that everyone know it or at least use it in many ways, but it also has some disadvantages as well. The most “important” disadvantage of this format is mainly the loss in the quality in the picture, obviously it depends of the level of compression that we apply to the picture and in most of the cases we do not notice the difference between the quality of the original file and the compressed picture: just in some distinctive cases we can notice just a little change between both, but it is only if we lead it to the limit.

In many areas of design, what designers want to work is a transparent picture, but .JPG doesn’t support it, that’s why they have to move to .PNG format which offers less compression and also many features in order to make work easy to share with other people.

Economically speaking, .JPEG technology has increased the number of devices that are able to create pictures, not only in photography also in design, video games or cinematography increasing the creativity in marketing or storytelling.
Thanks to .JPEG compression, more people are able to create content and share it with the entire world since our phone, tablet, gaming console or most of current devices. It has increased the market of digital cameras and cell phones since this can of technology is available for everyone. Nowadays all of us can take pictures and use this format in many ways, sometimes it is used for professional purposes but also we can use it for nearly everything related to media and art.

By Edward Santiago Angarita Nuñez - 201513835

Bibliography:

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Photographic_Experts_Group
http://httparchive.org/interesting.php#imageformats
https://books.google.com.co/books?id=AepB_PZ_WMkC&pg=PA291&dq=JPEG+%22did+not+specify+a+file+format%22&lr=&num=20&as_brr=0&ei=VHXySui8JYqukASSssWzAw&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=JPEG%20%22did%20not%20specify%20a%20file%20format%22&f=false
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG
https://www.google.com.co/search?q=JPEG&safe=off&biw=1360&bih=643&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiq8PeH4-DOAhVKKyYKHdJ_CsoQ_AUIBigB&dpr=1
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Network_Graphics
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_Interchange_Format