Last updated: 26 October 2026
JPG and PNG are the two most common image formats, and picking the wrong one can mean blurry screenshots or photos that are ten times larger than they need to be. Here is how they differ and when to use each.
JPG (or JPEG) uses lossy compression. It discards fine detail that the eye is unlikely to notice in natural images, which makes photos dramatically smaller. The trade-off is that every save at a lower quality setting throws a little more information away, and sharp edges — such as text — can pick up faint smudges known as compression artefacts.
PNG uses lossless compression. Every pixel is kept exactly, so text, lines and flat colours stay perfectly crisp no matter how many times the file is saved. The trade-off is size: a photograph saved as PNG can be five to ten times larger than the same photo as a good-quality JPG.
PNG supports transparent backgrounds; JPG does not. If you need a logo or icon that sits cleanly on top of any background colour, use PNG. Converting a transparent PNG to JPG fills the transparent areas with a solid colour, usually white.
Converting PNG to JPG is the quickest way to shrink a large photo saved in the wrong format, but remember transparency will be lost. Converting JPG to PNG does not restore detail that JPG compression already removed — it only stops further loss. It is useful when an application requires PNG or when you are about to make several edits.
Both conversions on this site run entirely in your browser, so your images are never uploaded.