Now that you have created a "scribble" in Paint, let's save the same picture three times to see how big each file size is for each different format. Go to the File menu and choose Save. Then use the drop down menu called "Files as type". See below.

Save the first file as 24 bit bitmap (BMP). Call it testpic.

Now, immediately go to the File menu and choose Save As and resave the file as JPG format. Third, resave the file a third time as GIF format. The same picture will be saved in three different formats. Which file is largest? Which is smallest? To see, we need to look at the files in My Computer. Open up My Computer and navigate to the place where the files were saved. You should see something like this as part of the window:

Note the size in pixels is the same for all the files. The icon is different for each file signifying that they are all different file formats. To see how big each is, you can "hover" the mouse cursor above each one, or click and see the file information to the left in the My Computer window. Below is the bitmap file. Its size is 351 KB (351,000 bytes - each byte is one unit of computer storage equal to one letter of the alphabet roughly).

When you click on the GIF file, the size is 9.72 KB (9720 bytes):

And, lastly the JPG file is 8.02 KB (8020 bytes).

If you look carefully at these files when they are open you may see small differences between them. The amount of "compression" is amazing. From 351,000 to 8020. The JPG and GIF files are over 40 times smaller, but look almost the same! Clearly, JPG and GIF are the file formats best suited to pictures in a web page. JPG and GIF will load 40 times faster in this case.

Try this exercise on your own. You will probably get different file sizes, but the proportions will be similar.