Convert AVIF to JPG
AVIF is the newest and most efficient image format on the web, which is precisely why the file you have just downloaded will not open in the program you downloaded it for. A JPG opens in everything ever made. The trade is size — swapping a 2019 codec for a 1992 one typically costs you two to four times the bytes.
Nothing is uploaded. Every image stays in this browser tab —here is how that works.
Nothing is wrong with your file
An AVIF reaches you one of two ways. Either you right-clicked Save image as on a site that serves AVIF — a growing share of them, since every current browser reads it — or something exported one for you. Either way the file is fine. What is failing is on your side of the wire.
Where it fails, specifically: a stock Windows install may want the free AV1 Video Extension before Explorer or Photos will show one; image editors older than roughly 2022 do not know the format at all; plenty of upload forms filter on the file extension against a list that predates it; and print and production workflows ask for JPG and mean it. None of that is going to change this afternoon, which is why converting is the pragmatic move rather than a capitulation.
If you only want to look at the picture, you do not need this page — drop the file onto a browser tab and there it is.
Push the quality higher than you normally would
This is a re-encode. The AVIF is decoded back to pixels and JPEG then compresses those from scratch, and the two codecs fail in different ways, which is what makes the setting matter here more than usual.
AVIF’s characteristic failure is smoothing: it quietly erases fine texture, so skin, fabric and foliage go slightly waxy. JPEG’s is ringing around hard edges and blocking in large flat areas. Run a mean JPEG quality over an AVIF and you collect both sets at once — and worse, the JPEG encoder cannot tell AVIF’s smoothing from the picture, so it spends bits faithfully describing it.
This page starts at the site’s usual quality of 80. For a picture that has already been through one modern encoder, 85 to 90 is the safer place to sit. The extra bytes are trivial next to the jump you are already taking, and they buy the difference between a copy and a copy that looks copied.
If the JPG has to fit under a limit
AVIF files are small enough that people stop thinking about attachment limits — and then the JPG turns up at four times the size and the form rejects it. Rather than nudging the slider and re-checking, set a max file size. Your quality setting is treated as a ceiling: the encoder tries it first and only searches downwards if the result is over budget, so a file that already fits is encoded once at the quality you asked for, and one that does not gets the highest quality that does.
If the destination is a screen rather than a printer, set a max width as well. Web AVIFs are usually already page-sized, but an exported one can be 4,000 pixels across, which is more than most layouts will ever display.
When converting is the wrong move
If the AVIF is yours and it lives on a site you control, do not convert the library — keep serving AVIF and let a <picture> element hand a JPG to the few clients that need one. Converting everything down to JPG to satisfy one old viewer throws away the reason the AVIF exists in the first place.
And if the image has to stay transparent, the target is PNG, not JPG.
What changes when you convert AVIF to JPG
Transparent areas become white — Trade-off
The target format has no alpha channel at all, so transparency has to be resolved into a real colour before encoding. Anything see-through — a rounded logo corner, a cut-out product shot, a drop shadow fading to nothing — is composited onto white. If the image will sit on a dark background, that halo will be obvious, and PNG or WebP is the conversion you actually want.
Only the first frame is kept — Trade-off
The source can hold an animation and the output is a single still, so the first frame is converted and the rest are dropped. There is no warning at the point of use — the file simply stops moving — so if the motion mattered, a short muted MP4 or WebM is the format you are looking for, at a fraction of the size an animated GIF would be.
HDR is flattened to standard range — Trade-off
The source can describe highlights brighter than a normal screen shows; the target cannot. The image is tone-mapped down to standard dynamic range, which usually reads as slightly duller highlights and a flatter sky. Nothing is broken — it is the same picture, rendered for an ordinary display.
Wide-gamut colour is converted to sRGB — Trade-off
Phone cameras and scanners record colours outside what sRGB can express — the saturated reds and greens in particular. Those are converted rather than clipped, so the picture stays true, but the most intense colours land slightly inside where they were. The conversion is done properly and once; the alternative, leaving the numbers alone and dropping the profile, is what makes images look washed out.
12 bits per channel become 8 — Trade-off
The source stores finer gradations per colour channel than the output can hold. In practice this shows up in smooth gradients — a clear sky, a studio backdrop — where the extra precision was hiding the steps between shades. At 8 bits those steps can become faintly visible bands.
JPEG opens absolutely everywhere — Benefit
This is the one format with no compatibility question attached: every browser, every phone, every photo frame, every twenty-year-old print kiosk. If something rejected your file and you are not sure why, JPEG is the answer that ends the conversation.
AVIF is already about as small as this image gets — Note
AVIF is the most efficient encoder in this tool, so an AVIF file is usually already near the floor for its quality. Converting it to anything older will normally produce a larger file — which is fine when the reason is that something you use cannot open AVIF, and pointless when it is not.
Camera and location metadata are not carried over — Note
EXIF is dropped: the camera model, the exposure settings, the timestamp, and — the one that matters — the GPS coordinates of where the photo was taken. That is a privacy improvement for anything you are about to publish and a loss if you were relying on it for cataloguing. Orientation is the exception: it is applied to the pixels, so the image stays the right way up.
Output is sRGB — Note
Everything this tool writes is in sRGB, the colour space the web assumes. That is what makes the result look the same in a browser, a chat app and a photo viewer without an embedded profile to carry around.
Questions people ask about this conversion
Why will Windows not open my AVIF file?
Because AVIF is decoded with AV1, and Windows does not always ship that decoder. Microsoft publishes a free AV1 Video Extension in the Store which adds AVIF to Explorer thumbnails and the Photos app; without it you get a blank preview or an unhelpful error rather than the picture.
What quality should I pick when converting AVIF to JPG?
Between 85 and 90. You are re-compressing an image that has already been through a very efficient encoder, and the two codecs spoil pictures in different ways, so the usual 80 shows itself sooner here than it would on an untouched original. Above 90 you are mostly buying file size.
Can I open an AVIF without converting it at all?
Yes. Every current browser decodes AVIF, so dragging the file onto a Chrome, Firefox, Edge or Safari tab shows it immediately. Convert when something else has to consume the file — not simply to look at it yourself.
Will the JPG look worse than the AVIF did?
At quality 85 or above, on an ordinary screen, almost certainly not. The place to check is a large smooth gradient — a clear sky, a studio backdrop — which is where JPEG shows its seams first. Compare the before and after in the tool before you download anything.
Related
Other things you can turn a AVIF into
Try it with your own file
Drop an image in and see the result before you download anything.