ARW to AVIF Converter

Convert ARW to AVIF: What This Tutorial Covers

This walks a Sony shooter through turning a .arw raw file into a small, web-ready AVIF — when it is the right move, the two settings that actually change the result, and the gotchas that trip people up. The short version: convert a copy to AVIF for the web and keep the original .arw as your editable master, because the conversion bakes in the render and the raw editing latitude does not survive it.

How to Convert ARW to AVIF

1. Upload Your ARW File: Drag and drop your Sony .arw onto the page or click "+ Add Files" to browse. You can queue several Alpha raw frames at once — straight off an α7, α6000-series, or older DSLR-A body.
2. Pick a Quality Preset: Open Advanced Options and set "Quality Preset". The dropdown runs Highest, Very High (Recommended), High, Medium, Low, Very Low, Lowest; "Very High (Recommended)" is pre-selected and is a sensible balance of detail against file size.
3. Set Image Resolution or a Specific File Size (Optional): Leave "Image resolution" on "Keep original", or downscale with "Resolution Percentage", a preset, or an exact Width / Height / Width x Height. If you need a hard ceiling instead, use "Specific file size" and enter a size in bytes, kilobytes, or megabytes.
4. Convert and Download: Click Convert and download your AVIF. Files upload over an encrypted connection, are processed on our servers, and are deleted automatically after a few hours. No sign-up, no watermark.

Walk-through: Quality, Size, and Resolution

The raw is demosaiced and rendered to ordinary pixels first, then AVIF-encoded, so "Quality Preset" is the single biggest lever on both the look and the weight of the result. AVIF degrades gently — at lower quality it tends to soften and smear fine texture rather than throw up the blocky squares JPEG produces — so you can push the preset down further than you would dare with JPEG before anyone notices.

• Want a near-archival web copy? Keep "Quality Preset" on Very High or Highest and "Image resolution" on "Keep original". This is the largest AVIF you will make here, and still far smaller than the source raw.
• Optimising a page for load speed? Drop to High or Medium and downscale to the largest size you actually display — serving a 6000-pixel-wide image into a 1600-pixel layout wastes bytes no codec can win back.
• Need to hit a hard number? Use "Specific file size", type the target, and pick the unit. The "Auto Scale" toggle inside that control lets the converter reduce dimensions as well as quality when the target is too small to hit by compression alone.
• Watching encode time? AVIF is slower to encode than JPEG by design — that is the cost of AV1's much better compression. A big batch of full-resolution raws takes a while, but that cost is paid once during conversion, not on every page view.

ARW vs AVIF: What Survives the Conversion

Where AVIF Files Open

Common Errors and How to Fix Them

• "The colours or exposure look off versus my edit." A camera's Creative Look or picture profile is a Sony in-body rendering instruction, and third-party raw renderers do not always reproduce it exactly. Apply your look in a raw editor and export a finished image first if colour accuracy matters.
• "The AVIF will not open on an older device or in an old app." AVIF is recent. Browser reach is excellent, but some older desktop viewers and editors still cannot decode it. For an unknown recipient, send ARW to JPG instead — it opens everywhere.
• "It looks soft compared to the raw." That is usually too low a Quality Preset, or too much downscaling. Step the preset up and move "Image resolution" back toward the original.
• "I uploaded an .arw and expected to keep editing it." A converted AVIF is a finished picture, not raw data — there is no editing latitude left in it. Keep the .arw and convert copies as needed.
• "My upload is crawling." Sony raws often run tens of megabytes each, so the practical limit is upload size and time rather than the conversion itself. A wired connection or smaller batches help.

When This Doesn't Work

AVIF is a delivery format, so it is the wrong target whenever you still need the raw's headroom or maximum reach. If you plan to recover highlights, reset white balance, or push exposure, do not convert yet — keep the .arw master and edit that. If you need a print-ready or lossless editing file, render ARW to TIFF for high-bit-depth, lossless output instead. And if the file has to open on anything and everything — email, older phones, any viewer — ARW to JPG is the safe, universal choice. There is no motion or hidden layer to extract from an ARW; it is a single still frame, so this page exists to render and compress that one frame, not to recover something that was never in the file.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I lose the RAW editing latitude when I convert ARW to AVIF?

Yes. An ARW stores unprocessed sensor data — typically 12-bit on early Sony Alpha bodies and 14-bit on most modern α models — which is why you can recover highlights and shadows and reset white balance long after the shot. To write an AVIF, the converter demosaics that data and bakes in the current white balance, exposure, and tone. Once it is an AVIF you are editing a finished image, not the raw. Adjust in a raw editor first if you want control, then convert the result, and keep the .arw as your master.

Are ARW and AVIF the same quality after converting?

Not in the sense the question usually means. ARW holds unprocessed sensor data with wide editing latitude; AVIF holds a rendered, compressed picture. The visible result can look excellent — often indistinguishable from the raw at normal viewing sizes — but the editing headroom is gone. For a faithful, web-ready copy AVIF is an excellent target; for anything you may re-edit, keep the original .arw.

Why convert a Sony RAW to AVIF instead of JPEG?

Size at a given quality. At similar perceived quality, AVIF files are commonly around 30-50% smaller than JPEG, and AVIF degrades more gracefully — its artefacts look like soft blur rather than JPEG's blocky edges, which shows up most across skies, gradients, and fine texture. The trade-offs are encoding speed and reach: AVIF takes longer to encode, and a small share of browsers and older desktop apps cannot display it. If universal compatibility matters more than file size, ARW to JPG is the safer choice.

Can I make the AVIF land on an exact file size?

Yes — that is what the "Specific file size" control is for. Enter a number and choose Bytes, Kilobytes, or Megabytes, and the encoder works toward that ceiling instead of a fixed quality level. Leave "Auto Scale" on if you want the converter to also reduce the pixel dimensions when your target is too small to reach by compression alone; a 3 MB target on a 60-megapixel frame at full resolution is asking a lot of any encoder.

Does the AVIF have transparency, and can it be HDR?

The AVIF format supports both an alpha channel and high dynamic range with wide colour gamut at 10 or 12 bits — that is one of its real advantages over JPEG. Neither applies to this conversion in practice, though: an ARW is an opaque sensor capture with no transparent areas, so there is nothing to make transparent, and the output here is a standard-dynamic-range delivery copy rather than an HDR-graded master. If you need a wide-gamut, high-bit-depth file for editing or print, render ARW to TIFF instead.

Which browsers and apps can open an AVIF file?

In browsers, AVIF works in Chrome 85+, Firefox 93+, Safari 16.4+, and Edge 121+ — about 94.7% of browser users worldwide can display it, per caniuse. Outside the browser the picture is patchier: recent macOS and Windows builds and current image editors handle AVIF, while some older viewers and utilities cannot open it at all. If you are handing the file to someone on an unknown setup, JPEG remains the safest bet.

Why is AVIF encoding slower than JPEG or WebP?

Because AVIF is a still image wrapped in AV1, a modern video codec, and AV1 spends far more computation searching for an efficient encoding than JPEG's decades-old transform does. That search is exactly what buys the smaller file. It matters most when you queue a batch of full-resolution Sony raws — each frame is tens of megapixels going through both a raw render and an AV1 encode. Downscaling first, when you do not need full resolution, is the quickest way to cut the wait.

What happens to my ARW file after the conversion?

It is uploaded over an encrypted connection, rendered and encoded on our servers, and deleted automatically a few hours later — no sign-up, no watermark, never shared or made public. The AVIF you download is yours; nothing is kept. Because Sony raws are large, the slowest part of the job is usually sending the file rather than encoding it, so if you are working through a shoot, convert in smaller batches rather than one enormous queue.