PS4 System Software 3.00 Features Detailed, Beta Starts Today

Lots of misstatements/over-generalizations in this thread, so let me try and clear this all up. PNG is NOT a magic bullet solution to images.

Comparison Chart

Image Type Purpose Transparency/Animation Best Use Case and Trade-offs
Gif Images with a limited amount of colors Trans: YesAnimate: Yes Drawings, vector graphics converted to raster images, like a cartoon
JPG Photographs where file size is a concern Trans: NoAnimate: No Photographs for the web, where you want the smallest possible file size and minor compression artificats are acceptable
PNG Lossless photographs Trans: YesAnimate: No Use when image size is not a concern, allows for the best possible quality

PNGs can look great, but they can be serious resource hogs. I took a screenshot from my PS4 and opened it in photoshop. The image is 1920px x 1080px in size, with a 72 dpi (the 72 dpi means it is at screen resolution, if you were printing you want at minimum 150, but 300 is best).


An explanation of file size

When I use the export function in photoshop called "Save for Web", which is allows me to compare the image in the different formats, you get the following:

The PNG of the image is 615k in size, which means on a slow connection it would take about 2 minutes to download.

The JPEG of the image is 106k in size, which means it would take about 20 seconds to download on a slow connection.

The GIF is 349k, about a minute to download at slow speeds, but you should also note the dithering around the eyes. That is because GIFs have a fixed color format (256 colors).


note that you won't see a compression difference between the PNG and JPEGs in my example because they started as a JPG

In my Dragon Age Screenshot folder I have 1000 images and they take up 277 MB. If they were PNGs those same images would take up 1.6 gigabytes. Your images may be lossless, but they are going to take up 6 times the room. Pick what works best for your purposes.

tl;dr - PNG will potentially give you a better image but at 6 times the file size

/r/PS4 Thread Parent Link - blog.us.playstation.com