FAQ

What formats can helloIMG output?

JPEG, PNG, WebP, and AVIF are supported conversion targets. GIF is accepted as an input and output too (including animated GIF → animated WebP through the WordPress plugin).

What's the difference between normal, aggressive, ultra, and lossless?

They're compression levels, not formats — you can combine any of them with any target format. normal is a safe default. aggressive and ultra trade more compression for smaller files. lossless keeps every pixel exactly as it was and only removes redundant data, so the size reduction is smaller but nothing about the image changes. See Introduction for the full table.

Do I have to poll for results?

No. POST /v1/optimize waits for the job to finish and returns the result directly by default. Add ?async=true if you'd rather get a job_id back immediately and poll /v1/jobs/{job_id} on your own schedule — useful for large images or when you're processing many at once. See API quickstart.

Does the WordPress plugin resize images too?

Yes — LW Image can resize on upload (max width/height, never upscaling) in addition to converting the format. See WordPress plugin.

What happens to the original file?

The WordPress plugin keeps a backup of the original by default, restorable from the Media Library, and only replaces the upload if the converted version is actually smaller. If the API call fails for any reason, the original is left untouched — nothing about an upload fails because of the plugin.

Is there a WordPress.org listing?

Not yet — install LW Image from Composer or a GitHub release for now. See WordPress plugin.

What if I need more than optimization?

AI alt text and SEO metadata generation, and background removal, are available on the higher plans — see AI and Plans & limits.