Plain-language explainers of image, video, audio, and document formats, and when to use each.
A Windows icon holds several images at once, and a cursor adds two numbers saying exactly where the click lands. What a conversion keeps, which image it picks out of the pile, and the coordinate that has nowhere at all to go.
The Netpbm trio was designed in 1988 to be trivial, and that is precisely why it still turns up in scientific and machine-vision work. ASCII against binary, the maximum-value trap, and the inverted bit that quietly produces negatives.
Two uncompressed image formats from the 1980s that refuse to disappear: one lives on in Windows tooling and test fixtures, the other in game texture pipelines. Why both persist, and what changes the moment you convert one.
TIFF is the default output of scanners and digitisation projects, and it is really a container of tagged images rather than a picture. What multi-page means, which compression variants exist, and what a conversion honestly gives you.
When someone returns a filled PDF form, the answers can travel as a small separate file instead of the whole document. What that file holds, and why it is more sensitive than it looks.
Graphs are nodes and edges, and every tool that analyses or draws them picked a different file format. What each one carries, and why layout almost never survives.
Feeds and playlists are lists of links with a little structure, and they are how you leave a platform without leaving your subscriptions behind. What each holds and how to move them.
Convert desktop and web font containers locally, choose the right TTF, WOFF, WOFF2, or EOT output, and validate the result before using it.
WOFF2 is not a different typeface, it is the same sfnt tables preprocessed and squeezed with Brotli. What that means for the file you ship, and what the wrapper cannot fix.
Move your DRM-free ebooks between EPUB, MOBI, and plain formats locally in the browser: reading-order preserved, nothing uploaded.
Convert between STL, OBJ, 3MF, GLB, glTF, PLY, and STEP CAD geometry locally with Open CASCADE and mesh tools, ready for 3D printing or web viewers.
A practical comparison of the five image formats that matter most today (how they differ in compression, quality, transparency, and support) with clear guidance on when to pick each.
