BMP is the standard Windows bitmap file format. This format works well if you are going to use a graphic in an on-screen display or presentation in Windows.

GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) is commonly used for graphics on the World Wide Web. They use 256 or less "Web-safe" colors. They can have a transparent background so your background surrounds the image. They can be interlaced for incremental downloading and they are the graphic type used for animations.

JPEG (Joint Photographics Experts Group) is commonly used for photographs and other graphics containing thousands or more colors on the World Wide Web. This type of file can be compressed to take less storage space but will loose quality during the process.

PNG is a file format that is sometimes used on the World Wide Web but not all Browsers can view this format. These are Vector graphics, which means they can be resized without any pixilation (no distortion). This type of file can be compressed with no loss of quality.

TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) is a cross-platform, high-resolution graphic file format. It is designed for high quality printing but does not work on the World Wide Web.