Guides
Practical explanations of the things people actually run into when converting files — image formats, compression, resolution, and getting documents into a PDF. Written to be useful whether or not you use the Workbench tools.
Images: formats, quality, and size
Includes measured file sizes and close-up crops for a photo, a screenshot, and a chart.
PNG vs JPG vs WebP: Which Image Format Should You Use?
Why the three formats exist, what each is genuinely good at, and a four-step decision that settles most cases.
Read guide → COMPRESSIONWhy JPEG Images Lose Quality and How Compression Works
The single step where JPEG loses detail, what each artefact tells you, and why re-saving the same file keeps making it worse.
Read guide → RESOLUTIONImage Resolution Explained: Pixels, DPI and Print Size
Why changing DPI alone doesn’t add image detail, the formula behind print resolution, and how many pixels common print sizes need.
Read guide →PDFs: scanning and assembling documents
Includes a worked A4 example with sample files you can download.
How to Turn Scanned or Photographed Pages Into One PDF
Capture technique, the resolution to aim for, format choice, and a clear account of what the finished PDF will and will not do.
Read guide → PDF WORKFLOWHow to Merge PDFs Without Uploading Sensitive Documents
The documents that most need merging are the ones you can least afford to upload. A workflow, plus the redaction trap that catches people out.
Read guide →Privacy: how local processing works
How to check what a browser tool sends, and what local processing does not protect.
Why these guides exist
File conversion looks simple until something goes wrong — a transparent logo comes out with a white box behind it, a scan is rejected as too low resolution, a photo looks worse every time it is shared. Almost always the cause is a small piece of missing background rather than a broken tool.
These pages cover that background honestly, including the limits of what the Image Converter, Merge PDF, and Image to PDF tools can do. Where a job needs something Workbench does not offer — optical character recognition, PDF compression, image editing — the guides say so and point you elsewhere.