A practical breakdown of when JPG wins for photography, when PNG is mandatory for crisp UI graphics, and when WebP beats both.
Core technical differences
JPEG was engineered for continuous-tone photographs containing thousands of subtle lighting transitions. It uses lossy 8x8 block compression and has no transparency channel at all.
PNG was created as a lossless replacement for GIF. It excels at flat colour, razor-sharp vector edges, UI screenshots containing small text, and graphics that need an 8-bit alpha channel.
When to choose JPG
Use JPG, or convert it further to WebP, for real-world photography:
- Hero lifestyle banners and architectural photography
- E-commerce product photos shot on a solid studio backdrop
- Blog featured images and author portraits
Convert JPG to WebP for smaller files
Shrink photographic JPGs by another 30% with the browser-based converter.
When to choose PNG
Saving a software screenshot or a logo as a low-quality JPG introduces fuzzy mosquito noise around crisp letterforms. Choose PNG, or a high-quality WebP, for company logos and badges that need transparency, dashboard screenshots and charts, and any graphic that will be edited again later.