Everyday

Convert images

Pick the image up in Finder, hold ⇧, let go toward the format you want.

What converts to what

Arazio reads and writes HEIC, JPG, PNG, WebP, AVIF, TIFF, GIF, BMP and ICO, and can write any image as a PDF. Each format has its own page listing exactly what it converts to.

The short version:

• HEIC → JPG is the common one. iPhone photos that something refuses.
• PNG → JPG when a screenshot is too large to email.
• Anything → WebP or AVIF when it is going on a website.
• Anything → PDF when it needs to be a document rather than a picture.

Several images into one PDF

Select the images, drag the selection, hold ⇧ and release toward PDF. Arazio asks whether you want one PDF containing all of them, or one PDF per image.

The order follows the order you selected them in.

Transparency

PNG, WebP, AVIF, TIFF, GIF and ICO keep an alpha channel. JPEG does not have one.

Converting a transparent PNG to JPEG fills the transparent areas with white, because that is the only thing a JPEG can do. If the result has a white box where you expected nothing, that is why — convert to WebP or keep the PNG.

Quality and size

JPEG, WebP and AVIF are lossy: they trade detail for size, and converting a file that has already been through that loses a little more. Convert once from the best original you have rather than repeatedly from a copy.

PNG and TIFF are lossless, so a PNG of a photograph is often many times larger than the JPEG it came from. That is not a bug in the conversion.

Shrinking without converting

If the format is fine and the file is just too big, use the Compress tool on ⌥ instead. It re-encodes the image where it sits rather than changing what it is. More about tools.

Nothing is uploaded

The conversion happens on your Mac. The engines contain no networking code at all, and a test fails the build if a networking symbol appears in one. Privacy and permissions.