Author
Ganesh Patil
Builds and maintains the tools on this site. Articles here are written alongside the tool they describe, which is why they tend to go into the parts other guides skip.
Each article is written by the person who implemented the tool it discusses. Claims about how something behaves are checked against the running code, and worked examples on tool pages are asserted against the actual functions in an automated test before publishing.
Articles
- 4 min readA Black Box Over the Text Removed Nothing At All
- 4 min readThe Same Clip Was Four Times Bigger as a GIF, at Fewer Frames
- 4 min readA Three-Size Favicon Was 15 KB and the Same Images Were 1.3 KB
- 4 min readExported as HTML, the Table Was Sixteen Times the CSV
- 4 min readBase64 Adds Exactly a Third, Whatever You Put Into It
- 4 min readCropping a JPEG Re-Encodes the Part You Kept
- 4 min readThe Same Table Was Three Times Bigger as JSON
- 4 min readCutting a Graphic to Sixteen Colors Saved Fourteen Per Cent
- 4 min readFlattening a PDF Made It 14 Times Bigger and Deleted Every Searchable Word
- 4 min readConverting a PDF to Grayscale Made It Bigger
- 4 min readCompressed, Base64 Cost Nothing on a JPEG and 17% on JSON
- 4 min readHex Is Twice the Size of Your Data, Base64 Is a Third More
- 4 min readHalf the Width and a Third of the Frames Took 60% Off the GIF
- 4 min readThree PDFs Merged Into Less Than Half Their Combined Size
- 4 min readMinifying JSON Saved 36%, and 3.7% Once It Was Compressed
- 4 min readMono at 16 kHz Was a Fifth of Stereo, and at a Fixed Bitrate Nothing Changed
- 4 min readOCR Recovered Every Character Flattening Had Removed
- 4 min readOne Page Out of Eight Was a Quarter of the File
- 4 min readRotating a JPEG and Back Changed 560,770 Pixels
- 4 min readRotating Every Page of a PDF Cost 29 Bytes
- 4 min readStripping Camera, Lens and GPS Data Saved Eighteen Bytes
- 4 min readThe Soundtrack Was a Sixth of the File the Video Came In
- 4 min readUpscaling Gave Back 91% of the File Size and None of the Detail
- 4 min readWhat a PDF Password Actually Costs, in Bytes and in Protection
- 4 min readA Watermark on Ten Pages Cost 458 Bytes and Page Numbers Cost 199
- 4 min readAn SVG Straight Out of the Export Dialog Was 38% Metadata and Spare Digits
- 4 min readA PNG Logo Wins Up to 128 Pixels, and the SVG Wins Everywhere Above
- 4 min readWindows Line Endings Cost 1.8% on Disk and Three Bytes Compressed
- 4 min readXLSX Cost 14% More Than the CSV and the Old XLS Cost Nearly Four Times
- 4 min readZipping 500 Tiny Files Made the Archive Bigger Than the Files
- 4 min readWhich Favicon Sizes You Actually Need
- 5 min readThe Same Image Was 10 KB as PNG and 7.6 MB as BMP
- 4 min readA Word Document Became 119 Bytes and Kept Every Word
- 4 min readWe Re-Saved a JPEG Twenty Times and Nothing Happened
- 4 min readLossless Audio Costs 40% of the Original and People Still Avoid It
- 5 min readGIF Was Perfect on a Page of Text and Ruined the Photograph
- 4 min readGIF Transparency Has Exactly One Bit, and It Shows on Every Edge
- 5 min readHow to Check Whether a Conversion Actually Kept Your File
- 4 min readInterlacing a PNG Made It 27% Bigger and Did Not Help
- 4 min readJPEG Compression Made No Difference to OCR Accuracy At All
- 5 min readJPEG Does Not Just Look Worse on Text — It Is Bigger Too
- 5 min readA Lossless Conversion Changed Every Pixel in the Image
- 4 min readWhat Each MP3 Bitrate Actually Costs, in Bytes
- 4 min readChoose an Image Format by Content, Not by What the File Is For
- 5 min readPNG's Maximum Compression Setting Is Free and Nobody Uses It
- 4 min readProgressive JPEG Is Usually Smaller, Except When It Is Not
- 5 min readThis PDF Kept Every Pixel and Still Came Out Looking Worst
- 5 min readWe Sent a CSV Through a Spreadsheet and Watched What Died
- 5 min readOCR Reads Nothing at 72 DPI and Everything at 150
- 5 min readThe JPEG Quality Cliff at 90, and What Actually Changes
- 5 min readJPEG Quality 80 Does Not Mean 80% of Anything
- 4 min readThe Three Invisible Bytes at the Start of Your CSV
- 4 min readTIFF Was Larger Than PNG on Every Image, Including With LZW
- 5 min readTwo Words That Look Identical and Are Not the Same Text
- 5 min readSaving as UTF-16 More Than Doubled the File, for No Benefit
- 4 min readLossless WebP Was Smaller Than PNG on Every Image We Tried
- 4 min readWhat "Compress PDF" Actually Removes, Preset by Preset
- 4 min readThis Emoji Is One Character, Seven Characters and Eleven Characters
- 4 min readSix Ways to Shrink an Image, and What Each One Costs
- 5 min readWhy "no export filter" Names the Wrong File Entirely
- 4 min readWhy a Ten-Page Scan Is 40 MB and a Hundred-Page Report Is 400 KB
- 5 min readHow to Open XPS Files When Windows Cannot Read Them
- 4 min readHow to Make a PDF Smaller Without Making It Blurry
- 4 min readWhy EPUB to PDF Changes the Shape of a Book
- 4 min readWhy a Scanned PDF Has No Text to Copy
- 4 min readWhy HEIC Photos Fail to Open, and What to Convert Them To
- 4 min readA Signature, a Redaction, and a Watermark Are Different Things
- 5 min readWhat Your Photos Are Carrying
- 5 min readWhen a Form Demands Exactly 200 KB
- 5 min readChoose an Image Format by Where It Is Going
- 5 min readWhy PDF to Word Never Comes Out Perfect
- 5 min readWhat Actually Happens When You Convert a File
- 4 min readYouTube Title Length: Where Titles Actually Get Cut
- 7 min readWhich of These Tools Run in Your Browser
- 4 min readWhy Emoji Break When You Reverse Text
- 4 min readWhat Makes a Good URL Slug
- 4 min readWhy item10 Sorts Before item2
- 4 min readHow to Remove Duplicate Lines From a List
- 5 min readThe Invisible Characters That Break Your Spreadsheet
- 4 min readWhy Two Word Count Tools Give You Different Numbers
- 4 min readHow Many Hashtags Should You Use?
- 4 min readHow Long Should a YouTube Description Be?
- 4 min readHow Many Words Is a 5-Minute Speech?
- 5 min readHow to Fix Line Breaks After Copying From a PDF
- 6 min readHow to Extract Email Addresses From Text