JPG to PNG

When PNG is the better format

JPG is designed for photographs and saves space by discarding a little detail each time it saves. PNG is lossless: every pixel is kept exactly. Converting a JPG to PNG is useful when you are about to edit an image repeatedly, when a website or program only accepts PNG, or when you want to add transparency later in an image editor.

What conversion does and does not do

• Dimensions stay exactly the same. The output has the same width and height as the input.
• Quality does not improve. Any blockiness already in the JPG is copied faithfully into the PNG. Conversion stops further loss; it does not undo past loss.
• The file usually gets bigger. Often two to five times bigger for photos, because PNG stores every pixel without lossy compression. That is expected.
• No transparency is added. A JPG has no transparent areas, so the PNG will not either until you edit it.

Good reasons to convert

• Screenshots, diagrams, logos and text graphics that were saved as JPG by mistake. PNG will stop them degrading further with each edit.
• Uploading to a service that only accepts PNG.
• Preparing an image for editing in several steps, saving in between.

For photos you just want to share or put on a website, staying in JPG, or switching to WebP with the WebP Converter, gives much smaller files.