Image guides

Most writing about image files is either a specification nobody reads or a listicle that repeats advice which stopped being true a decade ago. These articles try to sit in between: what the format is actually doing to your pixels, which number matters, and where the conventional answer is now wrong.

Three rules keep them honest. Every article has to contain something you could not have guessed — a threshold, a measurement, a specific failure. Every article has to say where the approach breaks down, including where our own tools are the wrong choice; the redaction guide tells you to retype sensitive text rather than trust any pixelation, ours included. And none of them is a rewrite of a tool page: if the substance were "here is what our compressor does", it would belong on the compressor.

They are grouped below by subject rather than by date, because none of it is news. Formats covers what to save and when; Editing is the practical craft; Photography is what to do before the file exists; Privacy is what your files reveal about you; Documents covers PDFs and text. Start anywhere — they cross-reference each other where topics genuinely overlap, and repeat each other nowhere.

If you only read one, make it the formats article. Nearly every other decision on this list — how small a file can get, whether an edge stays sharp, whether transparency survives, how much quality a second save costs you — follows from which format you picked at the start.