Other backup options
If you don't shoot a huge amount of images you can back copies of your images using an online photo sharing site, such as fotki.com, which offers unlimited web storage for a small annual fee. Such sites also have the advantage that you can access your images from any computer with web access, anywhere in the world, and many also offer mail order printing of your pictures. Of course storing your images online is only really practical if you've got fast internet access in the first place.
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The file format of every image file has a suffix in order to show what type of file format the file is – like this:
Image1.jpg or Children.Gif or Wedding.Tiff or Windmill.bmp etc
In digital photography, however, the files used are normally in jpg, tiff or raw format which we will now examine.
JPEG
Pronounced jay-peg, and named after the committee that designed it (the Joint Photographic Experts Group if you're interested), JPEG is the closest thing there is to a 'universal' photo file format. Although most JPEG files end in the '.jpg' suffix, you may also see '.jpeg' or even '.jpe' occasionally.
JPEG files also have the advantage that they can be opened and read by virtually all popular software packages. But by far the most important thing about JPEG is that it allows photos to be 'compressed' – squashed down so that they occupy much less space on your memory card or PC hard drive.