system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: The merits of the various image file types? (jpeg, tiff, png, bmp, etc.

I'm a little stumped by the variety of image files. Could someone please give me a run-through of the various file types? Ideally, I'd like to get a quick note on what makes it special and what its strengths and weaknesses are.

Also, if I forgot your favorite image file type, please enlighten me.

Thanks reddit.
gpt
* bmp:  Very, very simple.  It's really easy for the programmer.  However, it is uncompressed, leading to large file sizes.

* jpeg:  Good compression, especially for real-world pictures (e.g. photographs).  However, that compression can cause loss of information, leading to weird artifacts (hence "needs more jpeg").  It's a good format for distributing images once they've been created.

* png:  Good, lossless compression.  It's designed with the internet in mind, so it only supports the Red-Green-Blue color space that monitors use, not things like Cyan Magenta Yellow Key/Black that printers use (although conversions aren't terribly difficult).  

* tiff:  Very powerful image format, but consequently a very large file size.  It is a good format to use while working on an image, but isn't ideal for distributing it.

* gif:  Fairly old format that is able to do pretty good lossless compression on images that have only a few colors.  Also one of the only formats that can support animations, making gems of the '90s like hamsterdance possible.  Their limitation in colors makes using them to store things like clips of movies a poor choice, but until HTML5 there was no better alternative.

* You should also be aware of vectorized file formats, like CGM, Gerber, or SVG.  All of the above formats are rasterized--they store data about each pixel.  Vectorized file formats give a mathematical description of what the shapes should be.  This is a necessity for images that will be printed in large scale and/or at extreme resolution.  If, for example, you tried to represent a circle with a bmp you would have a jagged edge that you can see by zooming in.  If you used a vector format then the lines would remain perfectly crisp at all levels of zoom.  Naturally, these formats are poorly suited for photographs but they are great for things like logos.