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Image files - different types
There are many, many different ways to store images in computer files.
Almost every program available for editing images
has its own, unique,
format. Fortunately, there are a handful of very popular and widely
supported file types. These are
generally supported by all programs.

The main ones you will meet are:

JPG Joint Photographic Expert Group format. Images

can contain up to 16 million different colours and quality
can
be reduced
by
discarding
data to give smaller
file sizes. Excellent for storing images as long as quality is
kept high. A lot of useful information about the camera settings
used when the picture was taken are also
stored in JPG files
(EXIF data). You should avoid opening, editing and saving images
in JPG format
repeatedly as the quality will suffer (a bit like
making a photocopy of a
photocopy of a photocopy...). Save
intermediate steps in TIF
or the native format for your editing program (PSD for Photoshop
Elements).
TIF Tagged Image File Format. Images can contain up to 16
million different colours. They can be compressed
a
little, but no data is discarded so full quality is maintained.
The downside is that files are huge and EXIF
data cannot be stored.
GIF Graphics Image Format. Widely used for graphic images such as
logos. Not really suitable for photographs
as only 256 different
colours can be used. You do sometimes see photographs in GIF format,
but they look
grainy because the 256 colours have to be mixed to
simulate colours not available in the file.
PSD Photoshop Elements' native file format (also for the full-blown
Photoshop software). This is the best format
to use when editing
an image
using Elements, until you know your editing is complete. Saving
intermediate
steps in PSD format preserves quality. You can then
save the final image as JPG if that is the format you
need.
PNG Portable Network Graphics. This is a more recent file format
that attempts to combine the best of TIFF and
JPG. You may find
that some older programs do not support PNG files.