WebP, AVIF or PNG: choosing an image format in 2026
Modern formats save bandwidth, but not every workflow supports them. A short decision guide for photos, screenshots and logos.
The short version
- Photographs → AVIF or WebP, with a JPEG fallback for older pipelines.
- Screenshots and UI → WebP or PNG. Text stays sharper in lossless WebP at a fraction of the size.
- Logos and icons → SVG. If you must rasterise, PNG.
- Anything with transparency that ships to print → PNG.
AVIF: best compression, slowest encode
AVIF typically beats WebP by 20–30% at the same visual quality, especially on detailed photographs. The cost is encoding time and patchier support in older software. For a public website with modern browsers, an AVIF source with a WebP fallback is a strong default.
Browser-side encoding can be slow on low-powered devices. The Image Converter uses whatever the browser supports; if AVIF is unavailable, WebP is the safe second choice.
WebP: the pragmatic middle
WebP has broad support, fast encoding and good quality at moderate file sizes. It handles transparency, which makes it a natural replacement for PNG screenshots.
Watch out for one legacy trap: some desktop tools and CMS plugins still reject WebP uploads. Check the destination before converting an entire library.
PNG: lossless, predictable
PNG is large but reliable. Keep it for:
- Screenshots where text must stay crisp
- Images with hard edges and few colours
- Assets that pass through many tools
- Print workflows that expect lossless input
Quality settings that actually help
A quality slider is not a single number that works everywhere.
- Photos: 70–80 usually looks identical at normal viewing size.
- UI screenshots: lossless or quality 90+, otherwise text edges smear.
- Large hero images: resize first, then compress. Pixels you never display are wasted bytes.
Compress with the Image Compressor and compare the before/after size before committing.
One more consideration: metadata
Photos carry EXIF data, which can include GPS coordinates. Converting or re-encoding usually strips it. If you are publishing images of people or private locations, stripping metadata is a feature, not a loss.