Supported image formats

JPEG is the universal photo format. It compresses by discarding fine detail the eye is least sensitive to, which makes photos small but blurs sharp edges and text if pushed too far.

Best for: photographs that need to open anywhere. Support: Universal.

PNG stores pixels losslessly with full alpha transparency. It is ideal for screenshots, logos, UI and anything with sharp edges, but photos saved as PNG are several times larger than JPEG.

Best for: screenshots, logos, graphics and anything that needs transparency. Support: Universal.

APNG extends PNG with animation frames. Unlike GIF it keeps full 24-bit colour and smooth 8-bit transparency, at the cost of larger files.

Best for: high quality animated stickers and UI animations. Support: All modern browsers.

WebP is Google's web image format. It supports lossy and lossless compression, transparency and animation, and is typically 25 to 35 percent smaller than JPEG at the same visual quality.

Best for: images on websites and in apps. Support: All modern browsers; patchy in older desktop software.

AVIF uses the AV1 video codec for still images. It is the most efficient widely supported format, often half the size of JPEG, with HDR, wide colour and transparency, but encoding is slow.

Best for: maximum compression on modern websites. Support: All current browsers (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari 16+).

GIF is the classic animated image format. It is limited to 256 colours per frame and 1-bit transparency, so photos look grainy and files are large, but it plays everywhere.

Best for: short animations and reactions that must play everywhere. Support: Universal.

BMP stores raw, uncompressed pixels. Files are huge but trivially simple, which is why some legacy Windows software, embedded displays and printers still ask for it.

Best for: legacy software and embedded systems that require it. Support: Universal on Windows; most other platforms.

TIFF is the professional archive and print format. It can hold multiple pages, high bit depths and lossless data, and is common in scanning, publishing and GIS.

Best for: printing, scanning and archival masters. Support: Desktop photo and print software; not browsers.

ICO is a container that bundles several sizes of the same icon (16, 32, 48, 256 px) into one file. It is still the most compatible format for website favicons and Windows app icons.

Best for: favicons and Windows icons. Support: All browsers (favicon), Windows.

CUR is the ICO container with a click hotspot, used for custom Windows mouse cursors and CSS cursors.

Best for: custom mouse cursors. Support: Windows, browsers via CSS.

HEIC is the default photo format on iPhones and many Android phones. It is about half the size of JPEG, but Windows, many websites and older software cannot open it without converting.

Best for: storing photos on Apple devices. Support: Apple devices; limited elsewhere.

SVG describes shapes, paths and text as XML instead of pixels, so it stays crisp at any size. It is the standard for logos, icons and illustrations on the web.

Best for: logos, icons and illustrations. Support: All browsers; limited in office and social apps.

JPEG XL is a next-generation format designed to replace JPEG. It compresses better than JPEG and WebP, supports lossless, HDR and progressive decoding, and can losslessly repack existing JPEGs.

Best for: archiving and future-proof high quality storage. Support: Safari 17+, many image editors; not Chrome by default.

PSD is Adobe Photoshop's layered working format. It keeps layers, masks and effects, but almost nothing outside Photoshop can display it, so finished designs are exported to PNG or JPG.

Best for: editing in Photoshop. Support: Adobe apps, some editors.

TGA is a simple raster format still widely used for game textures and 3D rendering pipelines because it stores alpha channels reliably and loads fast.

Best for: game textures and 3D software. Support: Game engines, 3D and image editors.

PPM, PGM and PBM are the Netpbm family: deliberately minimal uncompressed formats used in scientific computing, computer vision and Unix image pipelines.

Best for: image processing pipelines and research code. Support: Unix tools, OpenCV, research software.

PGM is the greyscale member of the Netpbm family, common in computer vision and scientific imaging.

Best for: greyscale image processing. Support: Unix tools, OpenCV.

PBM stores 1-bit black and white images, used for fax-style documents, plotters and bitmap fonts.

Best for: 1-bit bitmaps. Support: Unix tools.

QOI is a modern lossless format that encodes 20-50 times faster than PNG with similar file sizes. It is popular in games and tools that value speed and simplicity.

Best for: fast lossless storage in games and tools. Support: Game engines, some editors.

Camera RAW files (CR2, CR3, NEF, ARW, DNG, ORF, RW2, RAF and others) hold the unprocessed sensor data from a camera along with an embedded full-size JPEG preview rendered by the camera.

Best for: editing in Lightroom, Capture One or darktable. Support: RAW editors only.

PDF is the standard for documents that look identical everywhere. Images placed in a PDF can be printed, emailed and combined into multi-page documents.

Best for: sharing, printing and submitting documents. Support: Universal.

DDS is a GPU texture format used by DirectX games. It stores block-compressed textures (DXT/BC) and mipmaps that graphics cards decode directly.

Best for: game textures and mods. Support: Game engines and texture tools.

OpenEXR is the high dynamic range format of film visual effects. It stores half or full floating-point channels in linear light, plus any extra render passes, and is the working format of compositing pipelines.

Best for: visual effects, compositing and 3D render output. Support: VFX, 3D and compositing software.

JPEG 2000 is a wavelet-based format that can be truly lossless or lossy, handles very high bit depths and huge images, and is used where long-term fidelity matters: archives, medicine, satellites and digital cinema.

Best for: archival masters and specialist imaging. Support: Archive, medical and imaging software.

Radiance .hdr stores high dynamic range light values, widely used for 3D environment maps and HDRI lighting.

Best for: 3D lighting and environment maps. Support: 3D software.

PCX is the image format of ZSoft's PC Paintbrush, the standard for DOS paint programs, scanners and games before GIF and BMP took over. It compresses with a simple run-length scheme.

Best for: DOS-era software, retro games and old fax or scanner tools. Support: Legacy viewers, GIMP, IrfanView, ImageMagick.

EPS is a PostScript drawing packaged for placing inside other documents. It was the exchange format of print and logo design for decades; most EPS files also carry a raster preview so layout software can show them.

Best for: print artwork and logos for professional layout software. Support: Illustrator, CorelDRAW, InDesign, Ghostscript.

DNG is Adobe's openly documented raw format. Some cameras and phones record it directly, Adobe DNG Converter turns other brands' raw files into it, and a Linear DNG holds already-demosaiced RGB that raw editors treat like any other raw file.

Best for: raw editing and archiving raw files in an open format. Support: Lightroom, Photoshop, Capture One, darktable.

SGI (also .rgb, .rgba, .bw) is the native image format of Silicon Graphics IRIX workstations, where much of 1990s 3D graphics and film work was done. It stores each colour channel as its own plane, uncompressed or run-length encoded.

Best for: legacy SGI and 3D pipelines. Support: Blender, GIMP, ImageMagick, Nuke and older 3D tools.

Sun Raster is the bitmap format of Sun Microsystems' SunOS and Solaris workstations. It stores 1, 8, 24 or 32-bit pixels, optionally with a colour map and simple run-length compression.

Best for: legacy Sun and Unix software. Support: ImageMagick, GIMP, XnView, IrfanView.

XBM is the 1-bit image format of the X Window System, written as C source code so it can be compiled straight into a program. It was used for cursors, icons and window decorations, and early web browsers displayed it.

Best for: X11 cursors, icons and C programs that embed bitmaps. Support: X11 tools, GIMP, ImageMagick.

XPM is the colour icon format of the X Window System, written as C source with a table that maps characters to colours. It remains in use for Linux application icons and in some toolkits.

Best for: X11 and Linux application icons. Support: X11 tools, GIMP, ImageMagick.

PAM is the general member of the Netpbm family: an uncompressed format with a self-describing header that can hold greyscale, RGB and alpha channels at 8 or 16 bits.

Best for: image processing pipelines that need alpha. Support: Netpbm, ImageMagick, GIMP.

PFM is a minimal floating-point image format in the Netpbm style: a three-line text header and raw 32-bit floats. Research code uses it for HDR images, disparity and depth maps.

Best for: HDR research, depth and disparity maps. Support: Research tools, ImageMagick, some HDR software.