JPG to PNG Converter

Converting between raster formats is a decode-and-re-encode, not a rename. Your file is decoded to a grid of pixels, drawn onto an HTML canvas at its original dimensions, and written out again using the target format's encoder. Width and height are preserved exactly — a 3000 × 2000 image comes out 3000 × 2000 in both directions.

What differs is how those pixels are stored. PNG uses lossless compression: every pixel is reconstructed bit-for-bit, which is why it suits screenshots, logos and line art where a single softened edge is visible. JPEG uses lossy compression, discarding detail the eye is poor at noticing in exchange for dramatically smaller files, which is why it suits photographs.

One consequence follows from that and is worth being clear about. Converting JPG to PNG does not restore quality. The detail a JPEG discarded is gone; a PNG made from it faithfully preserves the compressed result, artefacts included, usually in a much larger file. Going the other way, JPEG re-encoding at quality 0.92 is high enough to be invisible at normal viewing sizes.

The same photograph and the same screenshot, converted each way, show why the choice of format matters more than the choice of tool:

Those ratios are typical rather than guaranteed, and they run in opposite directions for a reason. PNG stores photographic noise faithfully, and photographic noise does not compress well losslessly, so a photo converted to PNG usually grows several times over. A screenshot converted to JPEG shrinks, but JPEG's handling of hard edges puts faint halos around text — the classic sign of a screenshot that has been through the wrong format.

If your goal is a smaller file rather than a different format, converting is the wrong lever. Compressing the image, or reducing its dimensions, will do far more than changing container.

It is also worth checking what the destination actually requires before converting at all. Plenty of upload forms that appear to demand JPG will accept PNG perfectly well, and some that reject both will take WebP. Converting an image you did not need to convert costs a generation of quality for nothing, and with JPEG that loss is not recoverable afterwards.

The honest rule is short: photographs go to JPG, everything else goes to PNG.

Use PNG when the image has hard edges, flat colour areas, or transparency — logos, icons, diagrams, screenshots, charts, anything containing text. Lossless compression keeps edges crisp and PNG is the only one of the two that can store an alpha channel at all. Use JPG for photographs, where the file-size saving is enormous and the quality cost is genuinely invisible at sensible settings.

The mistakes both run the same way. A screenshot saved as JPEG picks up compression halos around every letter and cannot be cleaned up afterwards. A photograph saved as PNG produces a needlessly huge file that is slow to upload and slow to load, with no visible benefit over a good JPEG.

If you are choosing for the web and neither constraint is binding, WebP beats both — smaller than JPEG at the same quality, and it supports transparency like PNG. Support is universal in current browsers. JPG and PNG remain the right answers for compatibility with older software, print workflows and upload forms that reject anything else.

JPEG has no alpha channel, so transparency cannot be represented. Converting a transparent PNG to JPG fills the transparent areas with white rather than failing — which is the right default for most images, but will look wrong if you were relying on the transparency to sit over a coloured background. If you need transparency, PNG or WebP are the only options here.

Because the image is re-encoded from decoded pixels rather than copied, embedded metadata does not travel with it. EXIF data — camera model, capture time, and on a phone photo the GPS coordinates of where it was taken — is not written into the output. If you are converting to share an image, that is a quiet privacy benefit; if you need the metadata preserved, keep the original alongside.

Colour profiles are handled by the browser during decode rather than carried through, so an image in a wide-gamut profile may shift slightly toward sRGB. For screenshots, web images and phone photos this is invisible. For colour-managed print work, convert with a tool that preserves the profile explicitly.