Prepare images for the web, social and PDF

The file4edit guides are seven step-by-step walkthroughs for the jobs people actually arrive with: preparing photographs for a website, getting a file under a size limit, stripping location data before posting, making a favicon, sizing one image for several social platforms, cleaning up a scan or screenshot, and turning a pile of images into one PDF. Each guide states the problem first, then gives numbered steps that link straight to the tool that performs them, and ends with the thing that is easy to get wrong. Every step runs in your own browser, so nothing is uploaded at any point.

How it works

  1. Find the job you arrived with The seven guides are titled by problem rather than by tool: a file that is too large, GPS data in a photograph, a favicon to build, a scan to clean up, images to turn into one PDF.
  2. Read the problem statement Each guide opens by describing the situation in the words you would use, so you can confirm it is the right one before following it.
  3. Follow the numbered steps Every step names the tool it uses and links to it, so the guide is a route into the app rather than a description of one.
  4. Read the 'worth knowing' note Each guide closes with the mistake that undoes the work — resize before compressing, never save a screenshot as JPEG, renaming a file does not remove its EXIF.

Questions

How do I prepare a photograph for a website?
Resize first, then compress. Reduce the image to the largest size it will actually be displayed at — a full-width hero rarely needs more than 1920 pixels wide and a thumbnail needs 400 — then compress to WebP at about quality 0.8, which is usually where most of the weight disappears. Compressing a 6000-pixel image and shrinking it afterwards wastes the work and keeps the artifacts.
How do I remove GPS location data from a photo?
Re-encode it. Phone photographs record EXIF metadata including the coordinates where they were taken; file4edit's metadata tool reads what is in there so you can see it, then strips it by re-encoding the image without any of it. Renaming the file does nothing, because the data lives inside the file rather than in its name.
Should I ever save a screenshot as JPEG?
No. JPEG's compression was built for photographs and smears every hard edge, which is what a screenshot is made of. Save screenshots and line art as PNG and photographs as WebP — the wrong choice here can triple the file size as well as damaging the image.

Every tool