Image format converter — free, private, in your browser

Output formats

PNG, JPEG, WebP or AVIF: which output should you pick?

All four output formats describe the same pixels in different ways. The right choice depends on what you plan to do with the file after converting.

• PNG is lossless and keeps full transparency. Pick it for screenshots, interface graphics, logos, text-heavy images and anything you plan to edit again. Files are larger, but every pixel survives the round trip untouched.
• JPEG is the universal photo format. It compresses well and opens in every device, email client and CMS ever made. It discards transparency, so this converter flattens transparent areas onto the background color you choose. Pick it for photographs that need maximum compatibility.
• WebP is the modern all-rounder. It supports lossy and lossless modes plus alpha transparency, and typically produces files 25–35 percent smaller than an equivalent JPEG. Every current browser displays it, which makes a PNG to WebP conversion the easiest win for page weight.
• AVIF is the newest option, built on the AV1 video codec. It compresses better than WebP at the same visual quality and also supports transparency. The trade-offs: encoding is slower, and only some browsers can encode AVIF — which is why this converter tests for support before offering it.

When in doubt: WebP for the web, JPEG for maximum compatibility, PNG when lossless quality is non-negotiable.

Under the hood

What your browser decides

An in-browser converter can only offer what the browser’s own codecs support. Decoding JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF and BMP works everywhere. AVIF decoding is now common, but AVIF encoding — the direction this tool needs — is currently limited to Chrome, Edge and other Chromium-based browsers. When the page loads it runs a one-pixel test encode; if your browser can’t encode AVIF, the option is removed from the list instead of failing later on your files.

HEIC and HEIF, the formats iPhones shoot by default, are a special case: no browser decodes them natively. When you drop a HEIC photo, the converter lazy-loads the open-source heic2any decoder from a CDN and turns it into a PNG locally, then converts from there. The library code travels over the network; your photo never does.

Animated GIFs convert as still images — only the first frame survives, because the canvas works one frame at a time. If you need to keep the animation, this is the wrong tool.

One useful side effect: because every conversion redraws the image on a fresh canvas, all metadata is stripped as a byproduct. EXIF, GPS, XMP, C2PA credentials and AI metadata such as Stable Diffusion parameters do not survive re-encoding. What conversion doesn’t do is change the pixels, so the image fingerprint stays intact. For a dedicated pass that verifies the clean and resets the fingerprint, use the free metadata cleaner.