Image Formats
Format-by-format reference for the modern web. Spec sheets, compression characteristics, browser support, and when to use each.
Raster formats
Pixel grids — the dominant web image format family. Photographic content, UI graphics, and most everyday imagery.
Modern web image format from Google offering smaller files than JPG and PNG with transparency and animation support.
Lossless raster format with full transparency support, ideal for logos, icons, and any graphic that needs pixel-perfect fidelity.
Universally supported lossy raster format from 1992. Excellent for photographs, unsuitable for graphics needing transparency.
Lossless 256-colour format from 1987 supporting animation. Limited to 1-bit transparency and inefficient versus modern alternatives.
Microsoft's uncompressed Windows bitmap format from 1990. Produces very large files and is rarely a sensible choice for the modern web.
Tagged Image File Format from 1986 used widely in print and scanning. Lossless and flexible but not a web-display format.
Royalty-free image format derived from AV1 video, offering better compression than WebP at the cost of slower encode times.
High-efficiency image container popularised by Apple. Excellent compression but limited browser support outside Safari.
Windows icon format from 1985 that bundles multiple image resolutions into a single file. The universal standard for browser favicons today.
Royalty-free next-generation image format with outstanding compression and lossless JPEG transcoding, held back by fragmented browser support.
Vector formats
Resolution-independent shapes. Logos, icons, line art, and anything that needs to scale to any size.
Raw & Professional
Working file formats from design and publishing tools. Layered, lossless, large.
Adobe Photoshop's native layered document format. Source-of-truth for design work, not suitable for direct web delivery.
Adobe Illustrator's native vector artwork format. Source files for logo and illustration work; export elsewhere for delivery.
Encapsulated PostScript from 1992 — a print-industry vector exchange format now largely superseded by PDF and SVG.
Specialised formats
Niche formats for games, scientific imaging, HDR, embedded devices, and legacy systems.
Targa raster format from 1984 still used in game asset pipelines and 3D rendering for its alpha support and simplicity.
Wireless bitmap format from 1999 designed for early WAP feature phones. Monochrome (1-bit) only and effectively obsolete on modern devices.
Microsoft's GPU texture format from 1999, designed for DirectX games with block compression and built-in mipmap support.
OpenEXR from Industrial Light & Magic — the VFX-industry standard for 32-bit floating-point HDR image storage and multi-channel render passes.
Radiance HDR from 1989, an early high-dynamic-range image format still widely used for 3D environment maps and image-based lighting workflows.