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ImageWebP vs AVIF vs JPEG, Measured on One Phone PhotoWe ran one 12-megapixel phone photo, a screenshot and a transparent logo through JPEG, WebP and AVIF in the browser. Here are the file sizes at matched quality, the encoding times and the traces each format leaves.ImageUS Visa Photo 2 × 2 Inches: Making the 600 × 600 File at HomeA US visa photo is a 2 × 2 inch square; online, it is a JPEG of 600 to 1200 pixels a side, no heavier than 240 kB. Here is the path from a phone photo to that file, with numbers from one run.PDFA PDFgear Alternative: What Matches and Where Your File GoesOn October 20, 2026, we matched the 37 cards on PDFgear's online tools page against PulsarKit. 34 of the 36 tools behind them had a counterpart; PDF to PSD and PSD to PDF had none.PDFCompressing a Scanned Book: What Each Level Does to 60 PagesA forum question asked how to shrink a 580-page book scan without hurting the text. We ran a 60-page scan through every level of Compress PDF and checked the pixels, the sizes and the words.ImageAn iLoveIMG Alternative for Image Jobs: What Matches, What Is MissingOn October 20, 2026, we matched the 13 tool cards on iLoveIMG's home page against PulsarKit. 11 had a counterpart; Upscale Image had none, and Blur face only came close.PDFiPhone Photos to One PDF: HEIC, Order, Size, What Leaves Your PhoneSeveral iPhone photos can become one PDF in Safari, with no app and no account. Here is how HEIC to PDF handles order, page size, Live Photos, dates and locations, and what stays on your phone.PDFPDF24 Tools and PulsarKit: What Matches and What Is MissingOn October 20, 2026, PulsarKit had a counterpart for 74 of the 108 online tools on PDF24's tools page. Both sites are free and need no account, so this comparison looks at the missing jobs, where your file goes and the stated limits.PDFA TinyWow Alternative: What Matches and What Is MissingOn October 20, 2026, we matched the 187 PDF, image and video cards on TinyWow's tools page against PulsarKit. 111 had a counterpart; AI edits, transcripts, social video downloads and some formats did not.PDFFree Alternative to Adobe Acrobat Online: What Matches, What's MissingOn October 20, 2026, we went through the 50 tool cards on the Adobe Acrobat online tools page. PulsarKit had a counterpart for 34 of them, with no account and no paid plan.PDFWhat a Free PDF Editor Can and Cannot DoOur free PDF editor puts text, white-out, shapes and images on top of a page and leaves the existing text alone. Here is what that does to your file, and what to use when the words themselves must change.PDFPDF to Word on a Mac Without Acrobat: Three Ways and What Each KeepsOn a Mac, Preview copies text and Pages cannot open a PDF, so the built-in route ends in copy and paste. Here is what each route keeps, from Word's own conversion to an online tool that rebuilds the file as DOCX on our server.PDFA Smallpdf Alternative Without a Subscription: What Matches and What Is MissingOn October 19, 2026, we went through the 47 tools on Smallpdf's tools page. PulsarKit had a counterpart for 39 of them, with no account, no daily cap on browser tools and no subscription.PDFHow to Check That an Online Tool Keeps Your File on Your DeviceOn October 19, 2026, we ran Compress PDF with the Network panel open and then with the connection switched off. Here is what a tool that keeps your file on your device looks like, and what a server tool looks like next to it.PDFAn iLovePDF Alternative Without Sign-Up: What Matches and What Is MissingOn October 16, 2026, we counted 31 PDF tools on the iLovePDF homepage, excluding two workflow cards. PulsarKit had counterparts for 28.PDFHow to Merge and Compress a Stack of PDFs Without Losing QualityCombining pages and shrinking a file are two different jobs. Doing them in the wrong order costs you quality you didn't need to lose.PDFRemoving Metadata Before You Share a File: PDFs and PhotosThe page you can see is rarely all that a file carries. Here's what is hiding in a PDF and a photo, and what removing it does and doesn't do.ImageWhy Your Compressed JPEG Still Looks BadA photo that looks soft after compressing usually has nothing to do with the compression setting you picked. It is the resolution doing that.PDFThe Right Way to Password-Protect a PDF Before Emailing ItPutting a password on a PDF can mean two very different things, and only one of them stops someone from reading the file.ImageBatch-Converting a Folder of iPhone HEIC Photos to JPGConverting a folder of iPhone photos to JPG sounds trivial, until a handful of them come back rotated the wrong way for no obvious reason.VideoTurning a Long Video into a Clean Clip for Instagram and TikTokA four-minute horizontal recording and a fifteen-second vertical clip are different problems, and solving them in the wrong order shows.PDFTurning a Stack of Scanned Pages into a Searchable PDFA phone camera and a flatbed scanner solve two different problems, and neither one makes the result searchable by itself.AudioMP3 vs WAV vs FLAC: Which One to Send, and Which to KeepMP3, WAV and FLAC solve three different problems, and picking the wrong one either wastes bandwidth or throws away quality for good.PDFRedacting a PDF Properly (a Black Rectangle Isn't Redaction)A black box drawn over a paragraph in a PDF doesn't remove the text underneath it, and that mistake has leaked real documents before.DataCSV to Excel and Back Without Breaking Your DataA CSV file that goes into Excel and comes back out again can end up subtly different from the one you started with, in ways that are easy to miss.PDFTurning a Presentation into a PDF People Can Actually ReadExporting a slide deck to PDF without picking a layout on purpose is how you end up with a document nobody outside the room can follow.PDFCompressing a PDF to an Exact File Size, Not Just 'Smaller'Ordinary PDF compression gives you whatever size happens to come out. Hitting an exact number, for an email or upload limit, is a different job.PDFFlattening a PDF Form Is Not the Same as Filling It InFilling in a PDF form and flattening one are two different operations, and confusing them either leaves a document editable or locks it too soon.PDFTurning a Stack of Photos into One Properly Ordered PDFA folder of photographed receipts or pages becomes a usable document in two separate steps: assembling it, and then getting the order right.ImageBuilding a Favicon That Isn't Blurry on a Retina ScreenA single small favicon.ico used to be enough for the whole web. It hasn't been for years, and treating it as enough is why so many icons look blurry.PDFBuilding a File-Processing Chain You Can Reuse Every TimeMost real document jobs need three or four separate tools run in a specific order, and doing that from memory every time is how a step gets skipped.GeneratorsWhy a Live Currency Converter Beats a Static Rate TableA currency rate you saved last week, or found on a page that hasn't been updated, is already wrong the moment markets moved after it was published.DataCleaning Windows-1251 and BOM Issues Out of a CSV Before You Import ItA CSV export that looks perfectly normal when opened in a spreadsheet can still poison a JSON import with an invisible character or the wrong encoding.DataGetting an E-Book onto an Older Kindle That Won't Read ePubePub is the standard e-book format almost everywhere, except on the Kindle device itself, which has never read it natively.PDFWhy a Repaired PDF Can Still Fail Archival ValidationFixing a PDF that won't open and making it archive-ready are two completely different standards. Passing one says nothing about the other.PDFPDF to Word and Back: What Actually Survives the Round TripConverting a PDF into Word and converting Word into a PDF are not mirror images of the same operation. One has to guess, the other doesn't.ImageRemoving a Background Without Photoshop, and Being Honest About ItAI background removal has become good, but it is still not magic. Here's what it does, and exactly where it still struggles.