PNG vs WebP vs JPG: which image format should you use?

Most of us use whatever format comes off the camera or gets saved by default. But picking the right format for the job can cut your file size in half, prevent quality loss, and make images load noticeably faster on a website. This is the practical version — no acronym overload, just the decisions you'll actually face.

The short version

JPG (JPEG): the universal photo format

JPG has been the default for photographs since the early 1990s. Its compression algorithm is specifically designed for the kind of smooth colour transitions you find in real-world photos — skin, sky, foliage, fabric. At quality 80–90%, it's hard to tell a JPG from the original at normal viewing sizes, and the file is a fraction of the size.

The trade-off: JPG compression is lossy, meaning it permanently discards some information every time you save. This doesn't matter if you're working with a master copy and only exporting JPGs for sharing — but if you keep re-saving the same JPG and editing it, quality degrades. For originals, keep a lossless copy (PNG or the original RAW file) and export JPG only for distribution.

JPG also doesn't support transparency. If you have a logo or illustration with a transparent background and save it as JPG, the transparent areas become white.

Use JPG for: holiday photos, portraits, product photos, any image going to print or into email — anywhere file size matters and the image doesn't need a transparent background.

PNG: lossless quality with transparency

PNG compresses without any quality loss. Every pixel you saved is exactly the pixel you get back. That makes it ideal for anything where precision matters: logos, icons, screenshots, diagrams, illustrations with flat colour or hard edges.

PNG supports full alpha-channel transparency — which means you can have a logo on a transparent background, overlay it on any colour, and the edges will look clean. JPG and basic GIF cannot do this.

The downside: PNG is a poor format for photographs. A photographic PNG can easily be 5–10× larger than the equivalent JPG. If you're trying to share holiday photos and they're huge, there's a good chance they're PNGs when they should be JPGs.

Use PNG for: logos, icons, screenshots, anything with a transparent background, anything you're going to edit further and don't want to re-compress.

WebP: the modern web format

Google developed WebP in 2010 to address the gap between JPG and PNG for web use. It does both: lossy compression for photos (like JPG, but better) and lossless compression with transparency (like PNG, but smaller). At equivalent visual quality, WebP is typically 25–35% smaller than JPG, and 25–50% smaller than PNG.

Browser support is now excellent. Chrome, Firefox, Safari (since 2020), Edge, and all modern mobile browsers handle WebP natively. The main gap is older software: some image editors, older Windows tools, and older Android apps may not open WebP files. If you need to send a photo to someone whose setup you don't control, JPG is still safer.

Use WebP for: images on your website or app — product photos, hero images, blog thumbnails, any image that needs to load fast in a browser. Not ideal for sharing photos with people who might open them in older or non-browser software.

File size in practice

The differences are real. A 12 MP iPhone photo converted at reasonable quality settings:

Numbers vary significantly by image content. High-detail scenes will be larger; flat landscapes will be smaller.

Which one to pick

• Sharing a photo with someone? JPG. It opens everywhere and is a familiar, manageable size.
• Saving a logo, icon, or screenshot? PNG. You need lossless quality and probably transparency.
• Putting images on a website? WebP. Your visitors will thank you with faster load times.
• Archiving original photos? Keep the original format (RAW, HEIC, or TIFF). Convert to JPG or WebP only for the copies you're sharing or publishing.