JPG vs JPEG

Ben Shoemate
Ben Shoemate
Published in
1 min readOct 3, 2014

In case you were wondering: .jpg and .jpeg are the exact same thing. Back in DOS days file extensions could only be 3 letters so the JPEG format — (which stands for Joint Photographic Expert Group) was further abbreviated as JPG. Now that computers allow more than 3 letters — JPEG is sometimes used. But for some of us, old habits die-hard and I still bristle when I see JPEG instead of JPG mainly because it catches me off guard.

Another piece of trivia, one of the first JPGS, Lena.jpg — was the standard test image used in almost every academic article on image compression written since 1974 (for example see: http://www.cs.utah.edu/~croberts/courses/cs7966/project3/)

This scan became one of the most used images in computer history.
This scan became one of the most used images in computer history.

It is a picture of Lena Söderberg cropped from the centerfold of the November 1972 issue of Playboy magazine. Apparently the only source of images they had lying around the lab.

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Ben Shoemate
Ben Shoemate

I design and build web software. Designer, information architect, and armchair philosopher.