Image formats that can be used directly in PDF

Hi,

after severel hours of searching google, discussion boards and the PDF reference, I could not find an answer, so hopefully you guys can help me .

I have written my own little PDF exporter and want to include images. I figured out to include jpegs directly, with the DCTDecode filter.

Are there other image formats, which can be included in PDF directly?

I read somewhere, that GIFs - for example - has to be parsed to get the pixel data and than must be compressed again to be inserted in the PDF file. Therefore it would be easier for me to convert GIF to JPEG with an external program and then insert the JPEG into the PDF. Or is there an advantage, to include the GIF like described above?

What about BMP, TIFF and other image formats?

Is it possible to insert image files lossless into PDF?

I know, lots of questions but i would be really glad if someone can help me .

Thanks in advance,

Regards, Maecky