The 30-second answer
If your image is a photograph or anything with smooth gradients (a sunset, a portrait, a product shot), use JPG. If it is a logo, icon, screenshot, or anything that needs transparency, use PNG. That single rule covers about 95% of real-world decisions.
| JPG | PNG | |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | Photos, complex images | Logos, icons, text, screenshots |
| Compression | Lossy (throws away detail) | Lossless (keeps every pixel) |
| Transparency | No | Yes |
| Typical photo size | Small (e.g. 2–4 MB for a 12 MP shot) | Huge (e.g. 15–25 MB for the same shot) |
How JPG works
JPG (or JPEG) uses lossy compression: it deliberately discards image data your eyes are least likely to notice, especially in busy or textured areas. You control the trade-off with a quality setting from 1 to 100. At quality 80–90, most photos look identical to the original while the file shrinks dramatically — a 12-megapixel phone photo that is 20 MB as a PNG often becomes 2–3 MB as a JPG with no visible difference.
The catch: every time you re-save a JPG, it loses a little more quality. So keep your original and export JPG copies for sharing, rather than editing and re-saving the same JPG over and over. When a JPG is simply too big, the JPG compressor can shrink it to any exact target size without the guesswork.
How PNG works
PNG uses lossless compression: it finds patterns in the pixel data and packs them efficiently, but every pixel survives exactly. That makes PNG perfect for images with sharp edges and flat colors — logos, icons, charts, screenshots, text — where JPG's lossy math would smear ugly artifacts around the edges.
PNG's other superpower is transparency: it can store an alpha channel, so logos and icons can have see-through backgrounds. JPG simply cannot do this.
Why photos should almost never be PNG
A photograph contains millions of subtly different colors with almost no repeating patterns, which is the worst case for PNG's lossless compression. Saving a phone photo as PNG routinely produces files of 15–30 MB — ten times bigger than a high-quality JPG of the same image. Those megabytes cost you everywhere: slow uploads, bounced emails, sluggish web pages, and eaten-up phone storage.
If you have PNG photos sitting around, converting them is the single fastest win: use our free PNG to JPG converter to shrink them 5–10x in seconds, right in your browser. Need to go the other direction — for example, a JPG logo that needs transparency? The JPG to PNG converter handles that just as easily.
When PNG is the right call
- Logos and branding: crisp edges, often need transparency.
- Screenshots and UI captures: text stays razor-sharp.
- Images with transparency: icons, overlays, stickers.
- Archival masters: when you need a pixel-perfect copy (though TIFF is also used here).
Even then, run them through the PNG compressor — PNGs can often lose 30–60% of their weight with zero visible change.
JPG quality settings, demystified
Most tools express JPG quality as a number from 1 to 100, and the scale is not linear: the jump from 95 to 100 balloons the file far more than the jump from 70 to 75, with barely any visible gain at the top end. For photos, 80–85 is the sweet spot for sharing — files stay small and nobody can tell the difference. Use 90–95 only for images that will be printed or heavily edited later. Anything below 70 starts to show obvious smudging in skies and skin tones, so treat 70 as the floor for anything you care about.
PNG-8 vs PNG-24: a quick note
You may see two PNG flavors: PNG-8 (256 colors, like GIF) and PNG-24 (millions of colors plus transparency). PNG-8 is dramatically smaller and perfectly fine for simple icons with flat colors; PNG-24 is the default for everything else. If a tool offers the choice and your graphic uses few colors, PNG-8 can cut the file in half with no visible change.
The simple decision rule
- Does it need transparency? → PNG.
- Is it a photo or photorealistic? → JPG.
- Is it a graphic with sharp lines or text? → PNG.
- Still unsure? Save as JPG at quality 85 and compare side by side.