Web designers and developers face myriad file formats, each suitable or applicable to a particular use case. Therefore, image format users need to understand the critical features of PSD vs. AVIF to decide when to use a specific format for optimized design work and enhanced user experience.
The article compares features of AVIF and PSD, including web performance, structure, file size, image quality, animation support, compression technique, storage, and web browser support.
When is AVIF better than PSD?
AVIF images are cost-effective and accessible for content creators and developers since the AV1 codec is open source and has no restrictions or licensing fees, while PSD images are native file formats of Photoshop, and only Adobe Creative Cloud subscribers can use them.
AVIF formats are ideal for creating multilayered user interfaces and graphics that support transparency, live photos, and animations, including photographs, illustrations, and logos.
When is PSD better than AVIF?
PSD images are multilayered, detail-heavy, and offer a multidimensional, high-quality design outlook that can be scaled up and down without losing original quality, while AVIF images are smaller and high-quality but become indistinct or grainy when scaled downward or upward.
PSD file extension is suitable for professional printing, as it helps in generating print-ready content or materials, including business cards, posters, and brochures. PSD files are easily edited, manipulated, and of higher quality to ensure professional printouts and wider color simulation.
PSD versus AVIF Table Comparison
| Element | PSD | AVIF |
| Transparency | Supports transparency. | Supports transparency. |
| File Size | Larger files than AVIF. | Smaller files compared to PSD files. |
| Image Quality | High-quality images. | Excellent image quality. |
| Performance | Increased image loading times on websites AVIF. | Reduced image loading times on websites compared to PSD. |
| Structure | Comprises a file header, image data, image resources, color mode data, mask and layer data. | The structure has nested boxes like actual image data box, Container Box, File Type Box, and metadata. |
| Animation | Does not support animation or animated images. | Supports animations and animated content. |
| Storage | Larger and requires more storage space than AVIF. | Smaller and requires less storage space than PSD. |
| Compression | Uncompressed: Not lossless or lossy compressed. | Support lossless and lossy compression |
| Browser Support | Limited browser support compared to AVIF. | Wider web browser support compared to PSD. |
Differences and similarities between AVIF and PSD images
AVIF and PSD image formats are similar in terms of transparency support. Nonetheless, the two formats differ in web browser support, image quality, structure, file size, performance, lossy compression, animation support, compression technique, and storage needs.
Users must comprehensively understand the technical features of AVIF versus PSD file types to choose wisely the best format for a particular case.
Transparency
AVIF and PSD files have inherent support for transparency. PSD supports alpha channel transparency channels by allowing images with transparent backgrounds and complex compositions to be generated and assimilated flawlessly into other projects and objects.
Similarly, AVIF files support alpha channel transparency. However, unlike the PSD format, AVIF's transparent backgrounds enable transparency data to be produced, stored, and supported with lossless and lossy information.
File Size
AVIF files are smaller than PSD files, which can be 2 gigabytes because they store complex, high-resolution, high-quality designs. PSD can support up to 30,000 x 30,000 pixels, while AVIF supports 65,535 x 65,535 pixels. Multiple PSD files stored together can be larger than an AVIF file. AVIF's lossy and lossless compression using AV1 to compress image data results in smaller files than uncompressed PSD files. PSD retains image data and remains larger.
Image Quality
AVIF and PSD images are both high-quality file types. PSD supports a 24-bit RGB color model, while AVIF supports 8-bit, 10-bit, and 12-bit color depths per channel. AVIF supports multiple color sub-sampling formats: ICC profile, HDR, WCR, YUV 420, Pro Photo RGB, YUV 444, sRGB, and Rec 2020.
PSD supports multichannel color modes, including Monochrome, LAB color, Grayscale, Indexed Color, Bitmap, RGB, CMYK, and Duotone. The AVIF compression technique preserves all image data, leading to high-quality images, while PSD images are detailed, data-rich, and high-quality.
Performance
PSD files are larger than AVIF files. They can be as large as 2 gigabytes and accommodate complex, high-quality, high-resolution designs. Besides, they support up to 30,000 x 30,000 pixels in height and width, compared to AVIF's maximum file dimension of 65,536 x 65,536 pixels.
The advanced and efficient AV1 compression technique produces smaller AVIF files than lossless PSD files. As such, AVIF consumes fewer bytes and incurs less bandwidth costs than PSD because it uploads and downloads faster.
Structure
AVIF and PSD are raster-based image formats that can easily be compared in terms of structure. The PSD file extension has many graphical elements, texts, and images. Its structure starts with the file header, followed by image resources, color mode data, mask and layer data, and image info.
The file header comprises the primary image data, including color depths, image channels, and the file version. Its image header channels ranged between 1 and 56. The color mode data specifies the length of color data and processes and stores PSD's duotone image color and indexed color data.
In contrast, AVIF has nested boxes that store metadata and data. It has a File Type Box (ftyp) that is responsible for identifying and specifying the format version used at the top-lying box. The ftyp container has extra boxes like The Item Properties Box (iprp), Item Location Box (iloc), and Media Data Box (mdat) with diverse metadata and real image info. The image metadata in an AVIF file is sequentially stored as compressed frames using AV1 codec encoding.
Animation
PSD files do not support animation, while AVIF files do. AVIF inherently supports lively online content creation and animations via its multilayered image storage sequences. The format is supported by HIEF, which allows image elements and sequences.
While PSD hardly supports animations or animated images, its multilayered structure and high-quality definitions can be integrated into the designs of different file extensions to create lively content and animations.
Storage
PSD stores uncompressed image data, whereas AVIF stores lossy and lossless compressed image data. AVIF uses AV1 algorithms to significantly minimize file sizes, while PSDs store large quantities of image data, such as multilayered images or graphical elements.
PSD data layers are stored individually for easy editing, making them larger and necessitating more storage space than AVIF. However, data from both formats can be stored indefinitely in the cloud, file systems, hard drives, Base64 encoding, and content delivery networks, subject to storage conditions and handling procedures.
Compression
AVIF's lossy and lossless methods compress image data sequentially using the AV1 algorithms in a HEIF container format. Its lossless compression preserves all image data, resulting in higher-quality images. Lossy AVIF results in a slight loss in image quality as part of the data deleted.
On the other hand, PSD files do not need compression and are either lossless or lossy. Uncompressed PSD files result in larger, high-quality files, compelling users to use more storage space to keep them.
Browser Support
AVIF has a competitive edge over PSD in terms of web browser support. For instance, AVIF enjoys support across web browsers, including Brave, Discord, Vivaldi, Chrome, Edge, Opera, Safari, and Firefox. The file format is only incompatible with Internet Explorer.
In contrast, PSD has limited web browser support and is only compatible with top browsers like Chrome, Opera, Vivaldi, Edge, Firefox, and Safari. Nevertheless, Internet Explorer, Discord, and Brave do not support PSD files but can be viewed by installing third-party software, which shows the PSD as a thumbnail.
Convert AVIF to PSD or PSD to AVIF
Use Convertjack to convert AVIF to PSD inevitably online. Image users prefer PSD to AVIF because its files are scalable, allow for future non-destructive editing, and store image information losslessly to ensure all data is retained and high-quality images are produced.
The only viable and free online PSD to AVIF converter is convertjack, a tool that does not change your image features before, during, and after conversion. AVIF files are ideal because of their smaller file sizes, high-quality nature, faster image loading times, and broader web browser support than PSD files.