Acronym for Joint Photographic Experts Group.

A set of image file formats well suited for natural images. The "Joint" in the title refers to the fact that the standard is a joint effort between ISO and ITU-T.

Like many ISO standards, you have to pay to get a copy of them.

'Standard' JPEG uses lossy compression (Discrete Cosine Transform and quantisation) to significantly reduce file size while maintaining an acceptable image quality.

JBIG is a JPEG format for bi-level images (ie black and white).

JPEG2000 is a newer format using 'wavelet' compression, but this format is patent-encumbered, so you probably won't find any OpenSource software implementing it.

Often uses the FileExtensions .jpg or .jpeg.

Compare GIF, PNG

See http://www.jpeg.org/.