Notes on images, formats and doing the work in your browser.
Scanners offer TIFF, PDF and JPEG output, and the choice decides how much work the file is later. Why PDF is the right setting for documents, and how to unfold it into images.
2026-09-29
A logo that should float over any background arrives welded to a white rectangle. Why it happens, the fix that costs nothing, and the repair for when the original is gone.
2026-09-28
On a plane, on patchy hotel Wi-Fi, behind a firewall — browser-side image tools keep working after the page loads. What works offline, the one exception, and how to prove it.
2026-09-27
GIF caps every frame at 256 colours — a 1987 constraint that never left. Why photos turn speckled in GIF, what dithering actually is, and which format to reach for instead.
2026-09-26
Turning a sideways photo upright feels like it should be free — and mostly it is. Where the pixels genuinely move one-to-one, and where a re-encode still costs something.
2026-09-25
When the target size has a different shape than your image, something has to give. The two honest options — crop to fill, or pad to fit — and how to pick between them.
2026-09-24
Every platform that displays your image at a fixed shape will cut it to fit — from the centre, without asking. Choosing the crop yourself is the only vote you get.
2026-09-23
Rotate, crop, resize and watermark a pile of mixed images in one pass — and why the operations always run in that order no matter what you switch on.
2026-09-22
Sending previews, proofs or listing photos out into the world? Stamping text across a whole batch takes one pass. Also: an honest note on what watermarks do and don't protect.
2026-09-21
A long chat, a full page, a step-by-step process — captured as a pile of screenshots that arrive out of order. Joining them into one image fixes the reading experience.
2026-09-20
The browser-tab icon is one file holding several sizes at once. Why .ico still matters, what sizes go in, and how any square-ish image becomes one in a browser tab.
2026-09-19
Pasting from a PDF into PowerPoint or Docs usually ends in a fuzzy screenshot. Rendering the page as a PNG gives you a clean, sharp image of exactly the page you need.
2026-09-18
Phone photos embed the time, the device, often the GPS location. What EXIF metadata is, when it matters, and why a converted or compressed copy doesn't carry it along.
2026-09-17
One slider, several very different meanings: JPEG quantisation, WebP compression, PNG palette size, the JPEG inside a PDF — and two formats that ignore it completely.
2026-09-16
Transparent backgrounds survive some conversions and silently die in others. One reference for JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF, BMP, TIFF and PDF, as this site actually converts them.
2026-09-15
Product shots, profile photos and documents often can't be sent to a random server just to erase a background. How plain-background removal works right in the browser, and where its limits are.
2026-09-14
Convert a WebP logo or sticker to JPG and the transparency becomes a white box. Why that happens, and how converting to PNG keeps the background transparent.
2026-09-13
Scanners and print workflows love TIFF; upload forms and chat apps do not. What TIFF is for, how to convert it in the browser, and the multi-page catch to know about.
2026-09-12
A BMP stores every pixel raw, with no compression at all. Where these files still come from, why they are ten times bigger than they need to be, and how to shrink them.
2026-09-11
Sometimes you need one frame of an animation as an ordinary photo — for a doc, a slide, a listing. How GIF-to-JPG conversion works and what happens to the motion.
2026-09-10
LinkedIn recommends exactly 1584×396 for the profile cover image. What happens with other sizes, why banners come out blurry or badly cropped, and how to hit the spec precisely.
2026-09-09
SVG is a vector format many upload forms reject outright. Why they refuse it, how to convert SVG to PNG in the browser, and how to get a bigger render without blur.
2026-09-08
Instagram only keeps photos between 1.91:1 and 3:4. Anything outside gets cut automatically. The official numbers, and how to crop it yourself so nothing important disappears.
2026-09-07
Gmail caps outgoing attachments at 25 MB and quietly converts big ones to Drive links. What counts toward the limit, why recipients matter, and how to shrink image attachments properly.
2026-09-06
Screenshots and graphics exported as PNG are often the heaviest files on a page. Converting them to WebP keeps the transparency and drops the weight — here is how and when.
2026-09-05
Procurement portals, applications and registries often refuse images and demand PDF. How image-to-PDF conversion works in the browser, what page size you get, and when to stitch first.
2026-09-05
Forms that only take images, pages you want to share as pictures, decks that need a figure from a report. How PDF pages become JPGs entirely inside your browser.
2026-09-05
iPhones shoot HEIC by default, and plenty of software still refuses it. What HEIC is, how to convert it to JPG without uploading your photos, and how to stop it happening again.
2026-09-05
Discord's upload cap for free accounts is 20 MB right now. Where that number comes from, why your screenshots and scans exceed it, and how to get under it without a blurry mess.
2026-09-02
Every guide says 1280×720, YouTube now says 3840×2160. What the official spec actually is, whether old thumbnails are fine, and how to resize to exactly 16:9.
2026-08-31
The 2 MB thumbnail error is real — but only on mobile uploads. What YouTube's current limits actually are, and how to get any thumbnail under the cap without visible quality loss.
2026-08-30
Some uploaders, CMSs and printshops still reject WebP files. How to convert WebP to JPG or PNG in your browser, and how to decide which of the two to pick.
2026-08-28
AVIF is the format your browser quietly saved for you, and half your other software has never heard of it. Here is what it is, where it works, and how to get a file you can actually use.
2026-08-25
Re-encoding an already-optimised image can add bytes instead of removing them. Here is why that happens, when it is expected, and what a compressor should hand you when it does.
2026-08-24
PNG is lossless, so ordinary compression has almost nothing to throw away. Here is why your 2 MB screenshot stays 2 MB, and the two things that do reduce it.
2026-08-19
Most online image tools upload your file to a server. Here is what that means, what to check before you trust one, and how to verify a tool that claims it doesn't.
2026-08-15