Lossy vs Lossless: What It Means for Images, Video and Audio

3 min read · Updated 2026-11-01

Every image and video format has to answer one question: how much detail are you willing to give up to save space? The answer splits formats into lossy and lossless families.

Lossless compression

Lossless formats such as PNG, TIFF and (in lossless mode) WEBP shrink a file without discarding any information. You can open and save as often as you like and the pixels stay identical. The cost is larger files, especially for photographs.

Lossy compression

Lossy formats such as JPG, HEIC, AVIF and H.264 video remove detail the eye is least likely to miss. Files are far smaller, but the detail is gone for good, and saving a lossy file again adds another round of loss.

What this means when you convert

• Lossless to lossless: no change in the picture, only the file size and compatibility.
• Lossless to lossy: much smaller file, with a small and controllable loss.
• Lossy to lossless: the file grows but quality does not improve, because lost detail cannot be recreated.
• Lossy to lossy: each conversion costs a little, so convert from the original when you can.

Rule of thumb

Keep a lossless master (PNG, TIFF or the camera original) and make lossy copies for sharing. Never use a lossy copy as the source for further edits if you can avoid it.

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