JPEG, pronounced jay-peg, is an acronym that stands for the group that developed the JPEG file type, the Joint Photographic Expert Group. JPEG is a method of compression that significantly reduces the file size of photographic and other continuous tone images.

Digital cameras offer several JPEG compression levels and quality settings. For images with the least compression, the loss of quality is usually not seen by the human eye. Keeping jpeg compression to a minimum is a must if you want to print quality photos.

Some digital cameras only offer the jpeg file format. Advanced digital and Single Lens reflex cameras offer the option of shooting two additional file formats, TIFF and RAW.

JPEG files, unlike TIFF and RAW files, do not take up as much room on a memory card. They are also processed faster by the camera than the other file formats.

JPEGs store important camera settings and scene information known as EXIF data.

An image in JPEG format has a .jpg extension: filename.jpg.