What are the different usecases of PNG vs. GIF vs. JPEG vs. SVG?

Question

When should certain image file types be used when building websites or interfaces, etc?

What are their points of strength and weakness?

I know that PNG &

Answer 1

As of 2018, we have several new formats, better support for previous formats and some clever hacks of using videos instead of images.

For photographs

jpg - still the most widely supported image format.

webp - New format from google. Good potential, though browser support is not great.

For Icons and graphics

svg - whenever possible. It scales well in retina screens, editable in text editors and customisable via JS/CSS if loaded in DOM.

png - if it involves raster graphics (ie when created in photoshop). Supports transparency which is very essential in this use-case.

For Animations

svg - plus css animations for vector graphics. All advantages of svg + power of css animations.

gif - still the most widely supported animated image format.

mp4 - if animated images are actually short video clips. Twitter / Whatsapp converts gifs to mp4.

apng - decent browser support (i.e. no IE, Edge), but creating it is not as straightforward as gifs.

webp - close to using mp4. Poor support

This is a nice comparison of various animated image formats.

Finally, whichever be the format, make sure to optimize it - There are tools for each format (eg SVGO, Guetzli, OptiPNG etc) and can save considerable bandwidth.