You right click an image on a website, choose Save image as, and end up with a file your computer refuses to open. Double click it and Windows Photo Viewer shrugs. Try to upload it and the form rejects it. Drag it into an older version of Photoshop and nothing happens.
The file is almost certainly fine. What has happened is that websites moved to newer image formats faster than the software on your desktop followed, and you are now holding a file from the newer world.
The three formats behind almost every case
If a saved image will not open, it is nearly always one of these three.
WebP, from websites
WebP is a format Google introduced to make pages load faster. It stores the same picture in a noticeably smaller file than JPG or PNG, which means less data to download and a quicker page. That is a real benefit, and it is why most large sites now serve WebP by default.
The side effect is that saving an image from one of those sites gives you a .webp file. Browsers all understand it. Plenty of desktop software still does not.
AVIF, the newer one
AVIF came later and compresses even harder, often producing files around half the size of a JPG at similar quality. It is built on AV1, a video codec, which is part of why it is so efficient.
It is following exactly the same adoption curve WebP did. Browsers support it, websites have started using it, and desktop software is catching up slowly. If you have an .avif file, you are early.
HEIC, from iPhones
HEIC is the odd one out because it does not come from websites at all. Apple switched iPhone photos to HEIC to save storage space, so the photos in your camera roll are HEIC unless you changed a setting.
Send one to someone on Windows, or upload it to a site that only accepts JPG, and it is rejected. This is the single most common version of the problem, and it catches people out because the photo looks perfectly normal on the phone that took it.
Quick check. Look at the file extension. .webp came from a website. .avif came from a newer website. .heic came from an iPhone. All three are solved the same way.
Why this keeps happening
It is tempting to read this as software being broken. It is not. It is a gap that opens every time the industry adopts a better format.
Browsers update themselves constantly, so they pick up new formats within months. The photo viewer that shipped with your operating system, the design tool you bought four years ago, and the upload form on a council website do not. That gap is usually several years wide.
JPG went through the same thing in the 1990s. So did PNG. WebP is roughly where JPG was in 1998, AVIF is a few years behind it, and something will come after AVIF.
What to do about it
You have two realiztic options.
Convert the file
Turning the file into a JPG or PNG makes it readable by essentially everything. Which of the two you want depends on the image.
JPG for photographs. Smallest file, and the compression suits gradual color changes. It cannot store transparency.
PNG for logos, icons, screenshots and anything with text or a transparent background. Larger file, but nothing is lost and transparency survives.
We built free converters for the three common cases, and they run inside your browser rather than uploading anything. They are WebP to PNG, WebP to JPG and AVIF to JPG. There is no account, no watermark and no limit, and your file never leaves your device.
Stop the problem at the source
For iPhone photos specifically, you can change the setting. Open Settings, then Camera, then Formats, and choose Most Compatible. Your phone will save JPGs from then on. They take more space, but they open everywhere.
That only fixes photos you take in future. Anything already in your camera roll stays HEIC.
A note on file size after converting
Expect the converted file to be larger than what you started with, sometimes considerably. This surprises people and it looks like something went wrong.
Nothing did. WebP, AVIF and HEIC are all more efficient than JPG and PNG, which are older designs. Storing the same picture in an older format simply takes more room. What you gain in exchange is a file that opens everywhere, which was the whole point.
If this keeps happening with your own brand files
There is a version of this problem that is not about the web at all. If you find yourself converting your own logo between formats, the real issue is usually that it was handed over as a single file in one format, with no vector version and no transparent copy.
A logo delivered properly includes vector files that scale to any size without blurring, a transparent PNG for web and social, and a flat version for print. Converting is then never necessary, because you already have whatever you need.
If that sounds like your situation, our logo design service fixes it at the source rather than working around it.
Why can I see the image in my browser but not open the file?
Because your browser and your desktop software support different formats. The browser displayed it fine, which is why you saved it, but the photo viewer or editor you opened it with has never been updated to read WebP, AVIF or HEIC. The file is not corrupted.
Is WebP better than JPG?
For websites, yes. WebP produces smaller files at similar quality, so pages load faster and use less data. For sharing a file with someone or uploading it somewhere, JPG is still the safer choice simply because everything can read it.
How do I stop my iPhone saving photos as HEIC?
Go to Settings, then Camera, then Formats, and select Most Compatible instead of High Efficiency. New photos will be saved as JPG. Photos already on the phone stay HEIC and still need converting.
Does converting lose quality?
Converting to PNG does not, because PNG is lossless. Converting to JPG discards a small amount of detail, though at high quality settings the difference is not visible for normal viewing. What damages an image is repeatedly editing and re-saving it as a JPG, not a single conversion.
Are online converters safe to use?
It depends entirely on where the conversion happens. Most converters upload your file to a server, process it there and send it back, which means your image sits on someone else's computer however briefly. Our tools do the work inside your browser, so nothing is uploaded at all. You can check this by disconnecting from the internet after the page loads, the converter still works.
