PNG remains the interchange lingua franca for lossless RGB with broad tool support. WebP lossless often beats PNG on photographic screenshots but may fail in older print pipelines. AVIF lossless is promising yet inconsistently supported in desktop editors.
For UI screenshots destined for bug trackers, PNG is still the safest default. Encode time is fast; diff tools understand it. Try WebP lossless when your viewer supports it and storage costs matter.
For web delivery (not archival), lossy WebP or AVIF at tuned quality reduces bytes dramatically. Do not round-trip lossy formats expecting RGBV3D to fix artifacts— our codec preserves what you feed it, noise included.
RGBV3D enters when you want a documented experimental lossless container with CLI parity and browser verification—not when you need Instagram upload. Export path: master PNG → optional RGBV3D archive → PNG export from /image/ for sharing.
Decision checklist: compatibility requirements, need for alpha, tolerance for encode time, audience browsers, and whether pixel-exact regression tests exist. Document the decision in your repo README so future teammates do not re-litigate formats emotionally.
Write a team default: bug trackers and pixel regression use PNG; marketing heroes may use lossy WebP/AVIF in a stated quality band; experimental RGBV3D archives keep PNG masters until round-trip gates are green. Encoder support ≠ decoder support—unknown recipients still favor PNG. Separate “master” and “delivery” filenames so a lossy export is never mistaken for a golden fixture six months later. Add a short “forbidden” list: no lossy sources for pixel gates; no lossy-only masters; no global “best format” claims without corpus numbers. When the recipient is unknown, send PNG first; enable lossy delivery only after visual acceptance on modern browsers.
2026-05-10