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Virtually all astronomical image analysis is done with computers on digital data sets. Computer-based data analysis packages abound. The astronomical community uses the FITS standard to exchange data among these software packages and between researchers, but for publication of research results, other image formats require consideration. There are many of these: GIF, TIFF, JPEG, PCX, PBM, XBM, to identify a few. A number of these have properties that make them more desirable for publication purposes than FITS.
