PNG vs JPG vs WebP: which format should you use?

Three formats cover almost every image you will ever save. Knowing what each one is good at makes the choice obvious — and stops you from shipping a five-megabyte screenshot.

The one idea that explains everything: lossy vs lossless

JPG and WebP are usually lossy: they make files small by discarding detail you are unlikely to notice. PNG is lossless: it keeps every pixel exactly, which makes it faithful but heavy. That single difference drives nearly every decision below. Lossy formats win on photographs and file size; the lossless format wins on sharp graphics and perfect fidelity.

PNG — for graphics, text and transparency

PNG shines on anything with hard edges and flat colour: logos, icons, line art, charts and screenshots that contain text. It also supports transparency, so it can sit on any background. The cost is size. Because it stores photographs pixel-for-pixel, a single high-resolution photo saved as PNG can be many megabytes — wasteful for something a lossy format would handle in a fraction of the space. Reach for PNG when crispness or a transparent background matters more than weight.

JPG — for photographs and universal reach

JPG has been the default photo format for decades, and that ubiquity is its main strength: virtually every device, app, printer and form accepts it. It compresses photographic detail efficiently, so a normal photo is small and shareable. Its weaknesses are real but narrow — it has no transparency, and its compression adds soft halos around sharp edges and text, so it is a poor fit for graphics. For a snapshot, a portrait or a scanned document destined for the wider world, JPG is the safe, light choice.

WebP — the modern all-rounder

WebP is the newest of the three and, in many ways, the best. It can be lossy or lossless, it supports transparency, and at the same visual quality it usually produces noticeably smaller files than JPG and far smaller than PNG. If your only audience is the modern web, WebP is often the smartest default. The catch is compatibility: while every current browser reads it, some desktop software, older devices and upload forms still do not, which is why you sometimes need to convert a WebP back to JPG or PNG.

A simple rule for choosing

Photograph? Use JPG for compatibility, or WebP if you control where it is shown.
Logo, icon, screenshot or anything with sharp edges or transparency? Use PNG, or WebP if size matters and the destination supports it.
Building a fast website? Prefer WebP, with a JPG or PNG fallback for anything that must work everywhere.
Hitting a strict size limit? Go lossy — JPG or WebP — because PNG rarely fits.

Switching between them

Changing format is quick and private with the image converter, which loads PNG, JPG, WebP and more and exports to any of the three. A couple of conversions deserve a word of warning. Going to JPG drops transparency, flattening see-through areas onto a white background, so check the PNG to JPG notes if your image has a transparent background. Going from a lossy format up to PNG does not restore lost detail — it just stores the already-compressed result losslessly, usually at a much larger size.