Guides
Straight answers about image formats, quality and compression, from the people who build the tools on Free Image Lab — so they say what actually happens rather than what usually gets repeated.
- Are free image converters safe?Some are dangerous, most are merely careless, and the difference is something you can check yourself in about a minute.
- Does compressing an image reduce quality?Sometimes, and much less than you would guess. We measured it: the first save does nearly all the damage, and after that a JPEG stops degrading entirely.
- Why is my JPEG so big?Usually too many pixels, and often invisible sensor noise — which cost us five times the file size in testing. Ranked by how much each one actually costs.
- Is it better to resize or compress an image?We hit the same file size three different ways to find out. Resizing won every time, and at the tightest budget compression could not even reach the target.
- JPG vs JPEG: is there any difference?None at all. Same format, same file, different number of letters — and here is what is really wrong when a site rejects one and accepts the other.