“Why do there have to be so many?” a friend asked me recently.

All she wanted to do was save an image (simple, right?) but she faced a bewildering array of possible file formats: .png, .jpg, .gif, .tiff, .tga, and on and on.

How’s anyone who’s not a file format expert meant to choose?

Here’s my account of what happens when file formats breed: why it happens, who benefits, and who bears the costs.

Since I dived deep into the weeds of the web this time, I’ll make sure to zoom back out to the big picture next time!

Mark