JPG vs PNG at a glance
| JPG (JPEG) | PNG | |
|---|---|---|
| Compression | Lossy – fine detail is discarded | Lossless – every pixel is kept |
| Transparency | No | Yes, including semi-transparent areas |
| File size for photos | Small | Several times larger |
| File size for screenshots and graphics | Often larger, with blurry edges | Small and perfectly sharp |
| Repeated editing | Every save loses a little quality | No loss |
| Best for | Photos and scans of photos | Screenshots, text, logos, icons, charts |
Short answer: JPG for photos, PNG for everything with sharp edges, text or transparency.
How JPEG compression works
JPEG, standardized in 1992, is built around how we see. It separates brightness from color and usually stores color at a lower resolution, because the eye notices color detail less. The image is then cut into blocks of 8 × 8 pixels, each block is transformed into frequencies (a discrete cosine transform), and the finest details are rounded away – the quality setting decides how much. What remains is packed with Huffman coding.
For photos, this works astonishingly well: at 85–90 % quality, a JPG is a fraction of the uncompressed size and looks the same. Around sharp edges and text, however, the rounding shows as blocks and faint halos, and every time a JPG is edited and saved again, a little more detail is lost.
How PNG compression works
PNG was created in 1996 as a patent-free successor to GIF. It never discards anything: each row of pixels is first transformed by a filter that predicts pixels from their neighbors, and the result is compressed with DEFLATE – the same method ZIP files use. Large areas of one color, repeated patterns and clean edges compress extremely well; the random detail of a photo hardly compresses at all.
PNG supports full color with up to 16 bits per channel, an alpha channel for smooth transparency, and a palette mode with up to 256 colors for very small graphics.
When to use JPG
- Photos from cameras and phones
- Scans of photos and documents with images
- Photos on websites, in emails and on social media
- Whenever small files matter more than pixel-perfect detail
A quality of 80–90 % is the sweet spot for most uses.
When to use PNG
- Screenshots, especially with text and user interfaces
- Logos, icons and graphics with flat colors
- Charts, diagrams and line art
- Images that need a transparent background
- Images you will edit and save again several times
What about WebP, AVIF, HEIC and GIF?
- WebP can be lossy or lossless and supports transparency; files are usually clearly smaller than JPG and PNG, and all current browsers show it – a good choice for websites.
- AVIF compresses even better than WebP and is supported by current browsers, but not yet by many other programs.
- HEIC is the photo format of iPhones: efficient, but not supported by most browsers and many programs, so it is often converted to JPG.
- GIF is limited to 256 colors and is only still useful for simple animations.
- SVG is a vector format – the best choice for logos and icons when you have the original vector file.
Converting between JPG and PNG
PNG to JPG makes photos and large images much smaller; transparent areas are filled with a background color. JPG to PNG prevents further loss when you keep editing an image, but it cannot bring back detail that JPEG compression already removed – the file only gets larger. Both conversions run in your browser with the PNG to JPG and JPG to PNG converters on this site, for many files at once.
JPG, JPEG or JFIF?
They are all the same format. JPEG is the name of the standard (after the Joint Photographic Experts Group); .jpg became common because early Windows versions allowed only three-letter extensions; .jpeg and .jfif are other extensions for the same image data. Renaming between them changes nothing in the image.
Frequently asked questions
Is PNG better quality than JPG?
PNG is lossless, so it never loses detail. For photos, though, a JPG at 85–90 % quality looks the same at a fraction of the file size – so PNG is not "better" for photos, just larger.
Should I use JPG or PNG on my website?
Use JPG (or WebP) for photos and PNG (or WebP) for screenshots, graphics and images with transparency. For logos and icons, SVG is often best.
Does converting a JPG to PNG improve the quality?
No. The PNG looks exactly like the JPG – it just prevents additional loss when you edit the image further.
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