Borrowing a video codec for stills
AVIF takes the intra-frame coding tools of AV1 — the same technology that streams video efficiently — and applies them to a single picture. AV1’s sophisticated prediction and transform stages squeeze far more out of each byte than the ageing JPEG algorithm, so an AVIF often looks as good as a JPEG two or three times its size. The format stores the result in a HEIF-style container, which also carries metadata, colour information and an optional alpha plane. Both lossy and fully lossless encoding are available, letting you trade quality for size deliberately.
Beyond raw efficiency, AVIF was built for contemporary displays. It handles wide colour gamuts and high dynamic range with 10- and 12-bit depths, so highlights and saturated colours survive without the banding that plagues 8-bit formats.
Support, and where it lags
Every major browser now decodes AVIF, which has made it a serious choice for web imagery and a common output of modern image pipelines. The catch is that desktop software has been slower: many photo editors, file viewers and operating-system thumbnailers still cannot open an AVIF without a plugin. Encoding is also computationally heavy, so creating an AVIF takes noticeably longer than writing a JPEG.
Strengths
- Excellent compression — much smaller files than JPEG at similar quality.
- Supports HDR, wide colour and 10- or 12-bit depth without banding.
- Royalty-free, with both lossy and lossless modes and alpha transparency.
Limitations
- Desktop apps and OS viewers still lag browsers in support.
- Encoding is slow and CPU-intensive compared with JPEG.
- Not ideal as an editing master, since lossy mode discards data.
When to use AVIF
Use AVIF to ship photographs and rich web graphics at the smallest possible size when your audience is on modern browsers; keep a lossless master elsewhere for editing.
AVIF FAQ
- Is AVIF better than WebP and JPEG?
- For compression efficiency AVIF generally beats both, producing smaller files at comparable quality and handling HDR and wide colour that JPEG cannot. The trade-offs are slower encoding and patchier support outside browsers, so the “best” format depends on where the image will be opened.
- Why can’t my photo viewer open an AVIF?
- Many desktop applications have not yet added an AVIF decoder, even though browsers have. Until they catch up, the simplest fix is to convert the file to PNG or JPEG.
- How does Morphr open AVIF files?
- Morphr asks your browser, which already understands AV1, to decode the image, then re-encodes it to JPEG, PNG, WebP or TIFF locally. Nothing is uploaded, so the conversion happens entirely on your device.