JPG, PNG and WebP are the image formats you’ll meet most often. They all show pictures, but they store them in very different ways. Using the right one can make a file five times smaller, or stop your logo from looking blurry.

JPG (or JPEG): best for photos

JPG is the format your phone camera uses. It makes photos small by throwing away detail the eye barely notices. You choose how much to throw away with a quality setting.

  • Good for: photographs, product pictures, anything with smooth color changes.
  • Not good for: screenshots with text, logos, and drawings with sharp edges. JPG adds fuzzy “noise” around hard edges.
  • No transparency: a JPG always has a solid background.
  • Watch out: every time you edit and save a JPG again, it loses a little more quality.

PNG: best for sharp graphics and transparency

PNG keeps every pixel exactly as it was. Nothing is thrown away, which is called lossless compression.

  • Good for: logos, icons, screenshots, charts, and images with text.
  • Supports transparency: a PNG logo can sit on any background color without a white box around it.
  • Not good for: photos. A photo saved as PNG is often three to five times larger than the same photo as a JPG.

WebP: the modern all-rounder

WebP was created by Google for the web. It can work like a JPG (small, lossy) or like a PNG (lossless with transparency), and in both cases the files are usually smaller.

  • Good for: images on websites and blogs, where smaller files make pages load faster.
  • Supported by: all modern browsers, including Chrome, Safari, Edge and Firefox.
  • Watch out: some older programs and some upload forms still don’t accept WebP. If a form rejects your file, convert it to JPG.

Quick comparison

JPG PNG WebP
Photos Very good Large files Very good, smaller
Logos and text Fuzzy edges Very good Very good
Transparency No Yes Yes
Works everywhere Yes Yes Most places

Which one should you use?

  • Sending a photo or uploading it to a form: JPG.
  • A logo, icon or screenshot: PNG.
  • Images for your own website: WebP, for faster pages.
  • Not sure: JPG for photos, PNG for everything else.

How to convert between formats

  1. Open Convert Image.
  2. Add one image or many at once.
  3. Choose JPG, PNG or WebP and click Convert images.

When you convert a transparent PNG to JPG, the transparent areas become white, since JPG can’t store transparency. If you mainly want a smaller file in the same format, use Compress Image instead.