JPG vs PNG: Which Should You Use?
Use JPG for photographs where file size matters; use PNG for graphics, screenshots, and anything needing transparency or repeated editing. Here's the reasoning, so the rule sticks.
The one-line answer
Photos → JPG. Graphics, screenshots, logos, transparency, or files you'll edit again → PNG. (And for the web in 2026, consider WEBP for both.)
The core difference: lossy vs lossless
JPG uses lossy compression: it permanently discards visual detail your eye is unlikely to notice, which is why a 20-megapixel photo fits in a few megabytes. Every time you re-save a JPG, a little more detail is lost.
PNG is lossless: it stores every pixel exactly, no matter how many times the file is opened and saved. The cost is size — for photographs, a PNG is commonly 3–10 times larger than a visually identical JPG.
Where each format wins
- JPG wins on: photographs, file size, universal compatibility with old software.
- PNG wins on: transparency (JPG has none), sharp edges and text (JPG artifacts smear them), repeated editing (no generational loss), screenshots and flat-color graphics (often smaller than JPG here, too).
Common mistakes
- Saving screenshots as JPG — text gets fuzzy halos; use PNG.
- Saving photos as PNG for the web — huge files, no visible benefit.
- Re-saving a JPG many times during editing — convert to PNG first, edit, and export once at the end.
- Expecting a JPG-to-PNG conversion to restore quality — it can't; it only prevents further loss.
Converting between them
Both directions take seconds with the free converters: JPG to PNG when you need lossless editing or a PNG-only upload form, PNG to JPG when a photographic PNG is too large to share. Remember JPG flattens transparency to white — for transparency at small sizes, PNG to WEBP is the better move.