User Guide
- Upload your image or drag & drop it into the tool above.
- Adjust the settings to get exactly the output you need.
- Preview and download your result in seconds.
About the JPG to PNG Converter
This tool converts a JPG (or JPEG) image into PNG format in your browser. The conversion itself is straightforward, but whether you should convert is the more useful question — and the honest answer is that converting JPG to PNG never restores quality the JPG has already discarded. What it does give you is a lossless container, an alpha channel, and a format that survives repeated editing without degrading further. This page explains when that trade is worth making and when it is not.
The fundamental difference: lossy versus lossless
JPEG is a lossy format. When an image is saved as JPG, the encoder divides it into 8×8 pixel blocks, applies a discrete cosine transform, and discards the high-frequency detail your eye is least likely to notice. That is why a JPG is small — and why the discarded information is gone permanently. Save the same JPG a second time and a second round of detail is thrown away, which is how images degrade visibly after being edited and re-saved a few times.
PNG is lossless. It compresses using DEFLATE — the same algorithm behind ZIP — so every pixel is reconstructed exactly as it was. Nothing is approximated and nothing is lost, no matter how many times the file is opened and re-saved.
The consequence matters: converting JPG to PNG freezes the image at its current quality. Compression artefacts already baked into the JPG stay baked in. What stops is any further loss.
What you gain and what it costs
| Property | JPG | PNG |
|---|---|---|
| Compression | Lossy | Lossless |
| Transparency | None | Full 8-bit alpha channel |
| Colour depth | 24-bit (16.7M colours) | Up to 48-bit, plus indexed modes |
| Re-saving | Degrades each time | No degradation, ever |
| Typical size, photo | Small | 3–8× larger |
| Typical size, flat graphic | Larger, with artefacts | Smaller and cleaner |
| Animation | No | APNG only, rarely used |
The size row is the trade. A 12-megapixel photograph occupying 3 MB as a quality-80 JPG will commonly land between 10 MB and 25 MB as a PNG, because DEFLATE has almost nothing to exploit in the continuous tonal variation of a photograph. For a screenshot, a logo or a chart the position reverses entirely — large areas of identical colour compress extremely well, and the PNG is often both smaller and visibly cleaner than the JPG.
When converting to PNG is the right call
- You need transparency. This is the strongest reason. JPEG has no alpha channel, so a logo saved as JPG carries a solid rectangle of background. Converting to PNG gives you a format that can hold transparency — though the conversion cannot invent it. You still need to remove the background yourself; our Background Remover does that step.
- The image will be edited repeatedly. If a file is going through several rounds of cropping, annotation or colour correction, converting to PNG first stops each save from compounding the loss.
- It is text, a screenshot, a diagram or a line drawing. JPEG handles hard edges badly — the DCT produces visible mosquito noise around sharp black-on-white boundaries. PNG renders them exactly.
- A system demands PNG. Print workflows, some app-store asset pipelines and many design tools specify PNG outright.
When it is the wrong call
Converting a photograph to PNG for a web page is usually a mistake. You multiply the file size several times over, gain no visible quality, and slow the page down — and page weight is a usability and ranking factor in its own right. If the goal is a smaller photo rather than a lossless one, compress the JPG with our Image Compressor, or convert to WebP.
PNG-8 versus PNG-24
PNG comes in more than one flavour, and the distinction explains a lot of unexpected file sizes. PNG-8 uses an indexed palette capped at 256 colours and supports only single-colour transparency — excellent for simple icons and flat graphics, and very small. PNG-24 stores full truecolour with an 8-bit alpha channel, handling photographs and soft-edged shadows at a much larger size. This converter produces PNG-24, because a palette reduction would itself discard colour information.
Should you use WebP instead?
For anything destined for a website, often yes. WebP supports both lossless and lossy compression and an alpha channel, covering PNG’s use cases at a smaller size. Google’s published comparison reports WebP lossless files as roughly 26% smaller than equivalent PNGs. Since Safari added support in version 14 (September 2020), every current browser handles it. PNG remains the safer choice for print, archival masters and design-tool interchange, where universal software support still matters more than bytes. If WebP suits your case, use the Image to WebP Converter.
Worked example
A 1920×1080 screenshot of a spreadsheet, saved from a phone as a quality-85 JPG, occupies about 420 KB and shows faint halos around the cell gridlines. Converted to PNG it becomes roughly 310 KB — smaller, because the image is mostly flat white and repeated grid patterns, which DEFLATE compresses efficiently. The halos remain, because they were encoded into the JPG before conversion. Screenshot the spreadsheet as PNG in the first place and they never appear.
Privacy
This conversion runs entirely inside your browser using the Canvas API. Your image is never uploaded, so there is no copy on a server to be retained, indexed or leaked. You can confirm it by disconnecting from the network after the page loads — the tool still works.
Sources & further reading
- MDN — Image file type and format guide — the practical reference on which format suits which job.
- W3C — Portable Network Graphics (PNG) Specification — the standard itself, including the colour types and alpha handling described above.
- Google — WebP lossless and alpha study — the source of the 26% figure quoted above.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does converting JPG to PNG improve image quality?
No. The detail a JPG discarded when it was first saved is gone permanently, and no conversion recovers it. What PNG gives you is a lossless container, so no further quality is lost during subsequent edits and re-saves. If the original already looks soft or blocky, it will look identical as a PNG.
Why is my PNG so much larger than the JPG?
Because PNG stores every pixel exactly while JPG approximates. For photographs the difference is typically three to eight times. That is expected behaviour, not a fault — if size matters more than losslessness, compress the JPG or convert to WebP instead.
Will converting to PNG give my image a transparent background?
It gives the file the ability to hold transparency, but it cannot create it. A JPG has no alpha channel, so its background is real pixels. You need to remove the background as a separate step, then save as PNG to preserve the result.
What is the difference between PNG-8 and PNG-24?
PNG-8 uses an indexed palette of up to 256 colours with simple on/off transparency — small, and good for flat icons. PNG-24 stores full truecolour with a proper alpha channel, which suits photographs and soft shadows but produces much larger files. This converter outputs PNG-24 so nothing is discarded.
Is PNG better than JPG for websites?
Only for the right content. Use PNG for screenshots, logos, diagrams and anything needing transparency. Use JPG or WebP for photographs, where PNG multiplies the file size for no visible gain and slows the page down.
Can I convert several JPGs at once?
This tool handles one image at a time so it can show a full-size preview of the result before you download. For a folder of images, converting them one after another is quick because nothing is uploaded — each conversion is instant.
Are my images uploaded to your server?
No. The conversion uses the Canvas API inside your own browser, so the image never leaves your device. You can disconnect from the internet after the page loads and the tool still works.