JPEG is a file format for storing and distributing images,
particularly photographs. For a detailed technical overview,
please refer to the WikiPedia JPEG page. JPEG files typically
have a .jpg file extension. If you can't see file extensions,
you may want to Enable Windows File Extensions as you will have
great difficulty editing and manipulating image files otherwise.
Digital cameras typically default to saving photographs in JPEG
format as it provides a good compromise between quality and
filesize for most uses. JPEG is also a good format for
delivering photographic images over the web or in email. JPEG is
a lossy compressed file format, this means that a lot of
information that is imperceptable to the human eye is discarded
- Converting to another file format will not restore this
missing data. Unfortunately this degradation does become
perceptable if an image is later manipulated, so if you intend
to produce high-quality work you might want to switch your
camera to take photos in lossless TIFF, RAW or DN