PNG vs JPG vs WebP: Which Image Format Should You Use?

Use JPG for photographs, PNG for graphics with sharp edges or transparency, and WebP when you want the smallest file the modern web can read. That one sentence answers most cases. The format you pick decides three things at once — visual quality, file size, and whether transparency survives — and choosing wrong is why a logo looks fuzzy or a hero image takes three seconds to load.

The 10-second decision

• Photograph or any image with smooth gradients → JPG, or WebP for a smaller file.
• Screenshot, logo, icon, line art, or anything with text and hard edges → PNG, or lossless WebP.
• Needs a transparent background → PNG or WebP (never JPG).
• It's for a website and you want the smallest download → WebP first, with a JPG or PNG fallback only if you must support very old software.

JPG: built for photographs

JPG (also written JPEG) is lossy — it discards detail your eye barely registers, which is exactly why photos compress so well. A 6-megapixel photo that would be 18 MB uncompressed lands around 1–3 MB as a JPG with no visible loss. The catch is twofold: JPG has no transparency (transparent areas become a solid color), and it smears sharp edges, so text and flat-color logos develop a muddy halo at any quality setting. JPG also loses a little more every time you re-save it — so always export from the original, never from a JPG you already compressed.

PNG: lossless and transparent

PNG reproduces every pixel perfectly and supports an alpha channel (true transparency). That makes it the right choice for screenshots, UI mockups, diagrams, logos, and icons — anything where crisp edges and exact color matter. The trade-off is size: because it never throws data away, a photo saved as PNG is often five to ten times larger than the same photo as JPG. Use PNG for graphics, not for photographs.

WebP: the modern default

WebP does everything both older formats do and usually does it smaller. It offers both lossy and lossless modes, supports transparency, and is typically 25–35% smaller than JPG or PNG at matching quality. Every current browser — Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge — displays it, so for the web it's the safest small choice. The only time to avoid WebP is when a file has to open in older desktop software or an email client that still doesn't recognize it; then fall back to JPG or PNG.

The transparency trap

The single most common format mistake is saving a transparent image as JPG. Because JPG has no alpha channel, every transparent pixel gets flattened onto a background — usually white — and there is no undo. If your logo has a see-through background, it must be PNG or WebP. When you convert with the image format converter, it warns you before flattening transparency to JPG for exactly this reason.

Convert without losing quality

Converting changes the container and compression, not the pixels you started with — but two losses are one-way. Converting a transparent image to JPG destroys the transparency, and converting a lossy JPG to PNG just locks in the existing artifacts at a bigger size; it can't restore detail. Pick the destination format deliberately, then convert.

1. Decide the format from the rules above: photo → JPG/WebP, graphic → PNG/WebP.
2. Drop your image into the converter and choose the target format.
3. For JPG or WebP, set a quality of about 80 and watch the before/after size.
4. Download — the file is renamed with the correct extension automatically.

Format is only half the size equation

The right format gets you a smaller file; the right dimensions and compression get you a much smaller one. A 12-megapixel photo saved as a perfect WebP is still huge if it's displayed in a 600-pixel column. Resize to the dimensions you'll actually display with the image resizer, then dial in the quality with the image compressor. For the full workflow — crop, resize, format, compress, sharpen — see how to resize an image without losing quality.

Everything here runs in your browser on a canvas, so your images are never uploaded — you can convert private screenshots, client photos, or embargoed assets without handing them to a third-party server.