Choosing an image format is mostly a question of what the picture contains and where it will be used.
The three formats in one table
| JPEG | PNG | WebP | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Compression | Lossy | Lossless | Lossy or lossless |
| Transparency | No | Yes | Yes |
| Animation | No | No (APNG is separate) | Yes |
| Best for | Photographs | Screenshots, logos, text, sharp edges | Web images where you want small files |
| Support | Everywhere | Everywhere | All current major browsers |
JPEG
JPEG throws away detail the eye is least likely to notice, which is excellent for photos with smooth gradients and natural noise. It is bad for sharp lines and text, which gain fuzzy halos at low quality. It cannot store transparency, and every re-save at lossy settings loses a little more quality, so edit from the original, not from a previous export.
PNG
PNG keeps every pixel exactly, supports full transparency and has no generation loss. That is ideal for screenshots, interface graphics, diagrams and logos with flat colour. The downside is size: a photograph saved as PNG is often several times larger than the same picture as JPEG or WebP.
WebP
WebP can do lossy compression like JPEG and lossless like PNG, with transparency in both modes, and usually produces smaller files at similar visual quality. All current major browsers can display it. Older software, some email clients and some upload forms still reject it, so check where the file is going.
What about AVIF and HEIC?
AVIF often compresses even better, and HEIC is the default photo format on many phones, but browsers cannot create either of them reliably yet. Our converter therefore does not output AVIF or HEIC, and it will tell you when a format cannot be produced in your browser instead of quietly giving you something else.
A simple decision guide
- Photo for a web page: WebP, with JPEG as the safe fallback.
- Photo for email, a form or a document: JPEG, since it is accepted everywhere.
- Logo, icon or screenshot: PNG, or lossless WebP if the destination supports it. Use SVG for simple vector logos.
- Needs transparency: PNG or WebP.
- Printing or archiving: keep the original, or use PNG or TIFF.
Browser limits to know about
The tool converts using your browser's own image engine. Some browsers, notably Safari at the time of writing, cannot encode WebP in the page, and the tool shows that rather than giving you a mislabelled file. Converting a JPEG to PNG does not restore detail that was already lost, it only makes the file bigger. After converting, compare file sizes: a result larger than the original is a signal to choose differently.