JPG vs PNG: Which Image Format Should You Use?
JPG and PNG are the two formats you’ll bump into most often, and almost everyone has wondered which one to use. The short answer: JPG for photographs, PNG for graphics and anything that needs transparency. But it’s worth understanding why, because picking the wrong one means either a bloated file or a blurry image.
How JPG works
JPG (also written JPEG) uses lossy compression. Every time it saves, it throws away some detail your eye is unlikely to notice in order to make the file dramatically smaller. For a photo with thousands of subtle colour gradients, that trade-off is brilliant — you get a small file that still looks great.
The catch: JPG has no transparency, and the lossy compression shows up badly on sharp edges. Save a logo with crisp text as a JPG and you’ll see fuzzy grey smudges around the letters, called artifacts.
How PNG works
PNG is lossless. It keeps every pixel exactly as it was, and it supports a full transparency channel. That makes it perfect for logos, icons, screenshots, and any image with hard edges or flat colour. The downside is file size: a photo saved as PNG can be five or ten times larger than the same photo as JPG.
A quick rule of thumb
| You have… | Use | Why |
|---|---|---|
| A photograph | JPG | Small file, looks great |
| A logo or icon | PNG | Sharp edges, transparency |
| A screenshot with text | PNG | No fuzzy artifacts |
| A photo that needs transparency | PNG (or WebP) | JPG can’t do transparency |
Converting between them
Already have a file in the wrong format? You can fix that in seconds. If you’ve got a logo trapped in a JPG, convert it with our JPG to PNG converter — though note that PNG can’t add back transparency the JPG never had. Going the other way, a giant PNG photo becomes a tidy, email-friendly file with the PNG to JPG converter.
If you want the best of both worlds — small files and transparency — it’s worth looking at WebP. You can turn either format into it with our PNG to WebP and JPG to WebP tools. Every conversion runs in your browser, so your images never leave your device.
The bottom line
Don’t overthink it. Photos go to JPG, graphics go to PNG, and when you need the smallest possible file with transparency, reach for WebP. When you pick the wrong one, converting back is free and takes a few seconds.