
Fralick that described a fast DCT algorithm, as well as a 1978 paper by N.J. Their seminal 1974 paper is cited in the JPEG specification, along with several later research papers that did further work on DCT, including a 1977 paper by Wen-Hsiung Chen, C.H. Rao of the University of Texas at Arlington in 1973. Natarajan of Kansas State University and K. Ahmed developed a practical DCT algorithm with T. The main basis for JPEG's lossy compression algorithm is the discrete cosine transform (DCT), which was first proposed by Nasir Ahmed as an image compression technique in 1972. The original JPEG specification published in 1992 implements processes from various earlier research papers and patents cited by the CCITT (now ITU-T, via ITU-T Study Group 16) and Joint Photographic Experts Group. In 2000, the JPEG group introduced a format intended to be a successor, JPEG 2000, but it was unable to replace the original JPEG as the dominant image standard. JPEG/JFIF supports a maximum image size of 65,535×65,535 pixels, hence up to 4 gigapixels. JPEG files usually have a filename extension of.

The MIME media type for JPEG is image/jpeg, except in older Internet Explorer versions, which provides a MIME type of image/pjpeg when uploading JPEG images. These format variations are often not distinguished, and are simply called JPEG. JPEG/ Exif is the most common image format used by digital cameras and other photographic image capture devices along with JPEG/ JFIF, it is the most common format for storing and transmitting photographic images on the World Wide Web. JPEG compression is used in a number of image file formats.

JPEG was largely responsible for the proliferation of digital images and digital photos across the Internet, and later social media.

The basis for JPEG is the discrete cosine transform (DCT), a lossy image compression technique that was first proposed by Nasir Ahmed in 1972. The term "JPEG" is an initialism/acronym for the Joint Photographic Experts Group, which created the standard in 1992. Since its introduction in 1992, JPEG has been the most widely used image compression standard in the world, and the most widely used digital image format, with several billion JPEG images produced every day as of 2015. JPEG typically achieves 10:1 compression with little perceptible loss in image quality. The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable trade-off between storage size and image quality. JPEG or JPG ( / ˈ dʒ eɪ p ɛ ɡ/ JAY-peg) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. Continuously varied JPEG compression (between Q=100 and Q=1) for an abdominal CT scan
