Now there are many types of images file out there in the world today. But there are only 4 that you will mostly run into on the internet. They are defined by the file extension. There are subtle differences between these files. The bmp file is the basic image file.
All image files are basically a bmp, only differing in their storage methods.
The bmp file does not use any compression to store the file and will always produce the largest picture when stored on your hard drive. The Tiff or Tagged Image File Format produces a nice image quality and comes with several different compression's available when storing the image. This is a nice format to use. Jpg images also use a strong compression. This format will generally produce the smallest image, however you must be careful.