File formats

What each common format is good at, and what to watch out for, kept short and free of jargon.

Image format
JPG / JPEG
A lossy photo format that compresses heavily and is accepted almost everywhere.
.jpg, .jpeg
Image format
PNG
A lossless format that keeps sharp edges and supports transparency, at the cost of size.
.png
Image format
WebP
A modern format with strong compression for both photos and graphics, including transparency.
.webp
Document format
PDF
A fixed-layout document format that preserves pages exactly as designed.
.pdf