File format guides
What each format is, how it compresses, and when to use it — with links to every converter.
JPG.jpg .jpeg .jfifJPG is the world's most common photo format. It uses lossy compression to keep photos small, but it has no transparency and loses a little detail every time it's re-saved.PNG.pngPNG is a lossless format with full transparency. It keeps every pixel exact, which makes it ideal for screenshots, logos and graphics — but photos saved as PNG are large.WebP.webpWebP is Google's web image format. It supports lossy and lossless compression, transparency and animation, and is typically 25–35% smaller than JPG at similar quality.AVIF.avifAVIF is a modern format based on the AV1 video codec. It often produces files about half the size of JPG with fewer artefacts, and supports transparency and HDR.GIF.gifGIF is a 1987 format limited to 256 colours per frame with on/off transparency. It's still everywhere thanks to simple animation support, but it's inefficient for photos.BMP.bmp .dibBMP is Microsoft's uncompressed bitmap format. It's simple and lossless but huge: every pixel is stored raw, so a 12-megapixel photo takes about 36 MB.ICO.icoICO is the Windows icon format and the classic favicon.ico. One ICO file holds several square images (16 to 256 px) so each screen can use the sharpest size.HEIC.heic .heifHEIC is the photo format iPhones use by default. It stores photos at about half the size of JPG, but many Windows PCs, Android apps and websites can't open it.SVG.svgSVG is a vector format written in XML. It scales to any size without losing sharpness, which makes it ideal for logos and icons — but many apps and platforms only accept raster images.PDF.pdfPDF is the universal document format. It keeps layout, fonts and images identical on every device and printer, and can contain many pages of text, vectors and images.