.JPEG File Extension

In the early 1980s, no technology existed that allowed users to easily compress and share digital images with one another. In 1982, the JPEG workgroup began designing a compression standard that could be used to reduce image files' size, making them easier to share, while retaining as much of their quality as possible.

In 1992, the workgroup created the JPEG file format. JPEG files are images created using a lossy compression algorithm, which actually destroys some data contained within the original image file. However, this data loss is mostly unnoticeable to the human eye. Because the JPEG standard continues to allows users to produce sharable, high-quality image files, and because it is so embedded within technologies used to create and share images, it is still the most common image compression standard in use today.

NOTE: A JPEG file also contains metadata that describes the contents of its file, such as the color space, color profile, and image dimension information. Image files saved in the JPEG format are more commonly appended with the .JPG extension than the JPEG extension.