Saving an image in 2026 means picking between three formats that have overlapping uses but very different strengths: JPG, PNG, and WEBP. Pick the wrong one and your file is either 10× larger than necessary or visibly worse than it should be. Here's the simple rule, followed by the details.
The 10-second answer
- JPG for photographs and detailed scenes — small files, slight quality loss, no transparency.
- PNG for screenshots, logos, icons, anything with sharp edges or transparency.
- WEBP if your site / platform supports it (basically everywhere except some very old email clients) — smaller than JPG at similar quality, supports transparency.
Why JPG is great (and where it fails)
JPG uses lossy compression — the encoder throws away visual information that human eyes can't easily detect. That's why a 4 MB photo can drop to 400 KB without looking visibly worse. The catch: JPG fails on sharp edges (text, diagrams, screenshots) because the compression artifacts cluster around high-contrast lines.
Use JPG when: the image is a photo, you can tolerate a tiny bit of quality loss, and you don't need transparency.
Why PNG is great (and where it bloats)
PNG uses lossless compression — every pixel survives intact. It handles transparency natively and is the right choice for anything with crisp lines: UI screenshots, logos, icons, diagrams, line art.
The downside: for photographs, lossless compression isn't very compressing. A typical 1920×1080 photo can be 5–8 MB as PNG vs 500 KB as JPG. If you don't need pixel-perfect fidelity, PNG is overkill.
Why WEBP exists
Google released WEBP to solve the JPG/PNG tradeoff: it does both lossy and lossless, supports transparency like PNG, and produces files 25–35% smaller than JPG at similar quality. For web use, WEBP is almost always the right choice in 2026.
The one caveat: a small percentage of old email clients (notably Outlook for Windows) still don't render WEBP. For email attachments, stick with JPG or PNG.
Real numbers — same photo, three formats
A 1920×1280 landscape photo (medium detail) encoded at quality 80:
- JPG — 387 KB
- WEBP — 247 KB (36% smaller)
- PNG — 4,210 KB (10× larger)
For a website that loads dozens of images, that compression difference is the difference between a fast page and a slow one.
So which should I pick?
Here's the decision tree:
- Photo, no transparency needed, going on a modern website? → WEBP
- Photo, no transparency, going in an email or to an old system? → JPG
- Screenshot, logo, icon, anything with transparency? → PNG
- Animated? → use a video format like MP4 or AVIF rather than GIF.
Converting between formats
You can convert any image between these three formats in your browser at Uvelia's Image Converter — drop the file, pick the target format, download. The conversion runs in your browser, your image isn't uploaded anywhere.
For the same image but a different size, use the Image Resizer. To shrink an existing file, use the Image Compressor.