JPG, PNG or WebP? Choosing the right image format

JPG uses lossy compression tuned for photographs. It makes realistic images small and opens in every program, website and device made in the last thirty years. Its weaknesses are sharp edges (text, screenshots, logos), which get faint blocky artifacts, and transparency, which it doesn't support.

Use it for camera photos you share, upload to forms, print or email.

PNG is lossless: what you save is exactly what you get back. It keeps text and lines perfectly crisp and supports transparent backgrounds, which makes it the standard for logos, icons, interface screenshots and images you will edit again.

For photos, PNG files are often five to ten times larger than JPG with no visible benefit.

WebP, created by Google, does both lossy and lossless compression and supports transparency and animation. For the same visual quality it is typically 25–35% smaller than JPG or PNG, which is why websites use it.

All modern browsers support WebP, but some older programs and upload forms still don't — that's usually why people convert WebP back to JPG or PNG.

AVIF and HEIC are newer formats that compress even better. HEIC is the default on iPhones; AVIF is spreading on websites. Both are great for storage and the web, but less universally accepted, so convert to JPG when compatibility matters.

Converting JPG to PNG doesn't improve quality — it stores the existing JPG artifacts losslessly in a much bigger file. Converting PNG to JPG makes the file much smaller but replaces transparency with a solid color and can soften sharp edges. Converting to WebP from either usually saves space, and WebP to JPG or PNG restores compatibility.

Each lossy save loses a little more, so edit from the best original you have and convert to the final format once, at the end.

For JPG and WebP, quality around 80–85% is visually indistinguishable from the original for most photos while being far smaller than 100%. Going below 60% shows visible blockiness on detailed areas. Screenshots and graphics with text look best as PNG, or as WebP in lossless mode for websites.

Photo to share or upload: JPG. Screenshot, logo or anything transparent: PNG. Image for your own website: WebP. When something rejects a file, convert to JPG — it's the format everything accepts.