Most people pick an image format by accident — whatever the camera or the download gave them. But choosing deliberately can cut a file to a tenth of its size or save a logo from looking ragged. Here's how the three formats you'll actually meet compare.
JPG — for photographs
JPG (or JPEG) uses lossy compression: it throws away detail your eye is unlikely to miss, which makes photos small. That's exactly what you want for a holiday snap or a product photo. What you don't want it for is sharp-edged graphics or text — JPG smears crisp lines into fuzzy halos — and it can't store transparency.
PNG — for graphics, text and transparency
PNG is lossless: every pixel is preserved. That makes it the right choice for screenshots, logos, diagrams and anything with hard edges or a transparent background. The catch is size — a photograph saved as PNG can be several times larger than the same image as JPG, with no visible benefit.
WebP — the modern middle ground
WebP was built for the web and typically produces smaller files than both JPG and PNG at similar quality, with support for transparency. The trade-off is compatibility: a few older apps and tools still can't open WebP, which is why you sometimes need to convert one back to PNG or JPG to use it elsewhere.
A simple rule of thumb
- Photograph? Use JPG (or WebP for the web).
- Logo, screenshot, diagram, or needs transparency? Use PNG.
- Optimising for a website and your tools support it? WebP.
- Handed a format that won't open where you need it? Convert it.
Converting is quick and happens entirely in your browser: turn a JPG into a PNG for editing, a PNG into a JPG to shrink a heavy screenshot, or a WebP back to PNG for an app that can't read it. And whatever the format, if the file is still too heavy, run it through the Image Compressor and watch the size drop with a live preview.