PNG to JPG: what changes and when to use it
PNG vs JPG in one line
PNG is a lossless format built for graphics, screenshots and anything that needs a transparent background. JPG is a lossy format built for photographs, where its compression removes detail the eye barely notices and produces files five to ten times smaller. Converting PNG to JPG makes sense when the image is a photo, when you need a smaller file for email or a web page, or when a system only accepts JPG uploads.
What happens to transparency
JPG has no alpha channel, so any transparent areas in your PNG are filled with a solid colour during conversion. Our converter fills them with white, which is the safe default for documents and most websites. If your logo or icon needs to sit on a coloured background, keep the PNG instead.
When PNG to JPG is the wrong move
- Logos, icons and line art: hard edges and flat colour develop visible halos and blockiness under JPG compression.
- Screenshots with text: small text becomes fuzzy; PNG or WebP keeps it crisp.
- Images you will edit again: every JPG save loses a little more quality. Edit in PNG, export to JPG once at the end.
Getting the smallest file without visible loss
For web use, a quality setting around 80 is the sweet spot: files shrink dramatically and most people cannot spot the difference at normal viewing size. Resize the image to the dimensions it will actually be displayed at before converting; a 4000 px photo shown in a 800 px column is wasting roughly 95% of its bytes.
Privacy
Files are processed over an encrypted connection and deleted from our servers automatically about an hour after conversion. No account, email or watermark.