JPG

JPG (JPEG) is the most universal lossy photo format, standardized by the JPEG committee in 1992, offering a good balance between quality and file size, and supported by virtually every device and software. It is ideal for photographs, screenshots, and web images.

The downside of JPG is that compression introduces block artifacts and it does not support transparency, causing edges and text to blur. For image-to-3D conversion, JPG suits photographic height maps, but for contour-based conversion, PNG is recommended for clean edges; artifacts at the boundary between dark backgrounds and subject may affect the quality of the generated mesh.