.JFIF files start to show up more frequently

[Lotfi M.]

Hi, I have been encountering .JFIF files and I need to convert them before I can use them in the most common editing programs.

Can someone explain what it is? what's the difference between it and .PNG for example and why the hell are companies using them suddenly?

[minibois]

JFIF is more closely related to JPEG/JPG than PNG.

JFIF/JPEG/JPG are all lossy format types, PNG is lossless. Long story short; different compression algorhithms making the lossy compression lower quality, lower filesize (and typically alright for photos). PNG however is lossless, meaning it has a lot less compression, meaning larger file sizes and making them much more suitable for images with discretely different colors (e.g. a picture with a couple flat colors).

 

As far as I know, jfif and jpeg are the same. As in, they are both different parts of a full whole; but when using the extensions one of the other is included..

From Stack Overflow:

Quote

JPEG = the compression algorithm (Joint Photographic Experts Group)

JFIF = the file format (JPEG File Interchange Format)

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1427623/are-all-jpeg-files-jfif

[Cyberspirit]

I was watching a streamer who complained about this and this is supposedly caused by a recent Windows update. People aren't using JFIF, Windows just automatically converts pictures to that for some reason.

[homeap5]

33 minutes ago, Cyberspirit said:

People aren't using JFIF, Windows just automatically converts pictures to that for some reason.

First of all - how? How Windows automatically convert images? Where? Just any images? Wallpapers? Paint images? Email?

 

Second - people mostly using one format, but many formats exists for many reasons. People who knows more about computer graphics uses at least 6 formats (jpg, gif, png, tif, native graphics software format and pdf, sometimes eps, bik, webm or svg).

[Cyberspirit]

7 minutes ago, homeap5 said:

First of all - how? How Windows automatically convert images? Where? Just any images? Wallpapers? Paint images? Email?

 

Second - people mostly using one format, but many formats exists for many reasons. People who knows more about computer graphics uses at least 6 formats (jpg, gif, png, tif, native graphics software format and pdf, sometimes eps, bik, webm or svg).

Not sure, I just heard it on a stream where this was bought up. The person runs an art segment at the end of their streams where they show off people have made and whenever they grabbed an image from twitter in this case, it just downloaded as a JFIF.

 

I'm not running the latest version of Windows so I can't test it myself.

[Skipple]

16 minutes ago, homeap5 said:

First of all - how? How Windows automatically convert images? Where? Just any images? Wallpapers? Paint images? Email?

Still not sure the "how" but it appears to be something people are experiencing.

 

Not sure where they are saving from though.

[HarryNyquist]

They aren't converted though. JFIF and JPEG and JPG are just file extensions; they all refer to the same type of file that is encoded according to the JPEG Interchange Format standard (and thus having a MIME type of "image/jpeg"). Kinda like how HTM and HTML both refer to the MIME type "text/html".

 

So someone at Microsoft screwed up and put in JFIF for the MIME type instead of JPG.