There are two most common types of graphic images: bitmap and vector. Bitmap images (also known as raster images) are made up of pixels – tiny dots of individual color that make up what you see on your screen. They are resolution dependent – when displayed on the computer monitor, they are displayed at screen resolution; however, when printing bitmaps your printer needs a much higher resolution. The most common types of bitmap images supported by ImageConverter Plus are: GIF, JPEG, TIFF , BMP, PCX, PNG. Each of these formats has some peculiarities, though what makes them all similar are: pixels in a grid; resize with the quality loss and minimal support for transparency. GIF is used for pictures that use 256 (or fewer) distinct colors. They are compressed images, so transference of GIF images over the Internet is really efficient. JPEGs are similar in this respect. They are also compressed and support lossy compression algorithm. Still, compression ratio of JPEG files is adjustable. TIFF can handle multiple images and data in a single file via so called “tags” in the file header. Tags can indicate the basic geometry of the image, such as its size, or define how the image data is arranged and whether various image compression options are used. So, this file format is really versatile. PNG offers great color depth and compresses images without losing image data. BMP does not use compression. BMP files can be useful for creating temporary files to be further modified in other applications. However, BMP tends to create very large files that are not suitable for archive, web, and email use. Each of these image formats is fully supported by ImageConverter Plus for input and output conversion.