JPG to PNG Converter

Why convert JPG to PNG?

People convert JPG to PNG for two main reasons. The first is to add transparency. JPG has no alpha channel — every pixel is fully opaque — so if you've got a logo, product shot or cut-out subject saved as JPG and you want it to sit cleanly over any background, you need to convert it to PNG and then knock out the unwanted colour. The second is to stop further quality loss. JPG is lossy, so every time you save or re-save it, you compound the compression artefacts. Convert once to PNG and from that point on you can edit, crop and re-export without degradation.

There's a third, less obvious reason: PNG is the format most desktop applications, video editors and presentation tools handle most predictably. Slide decks (PowerPoint, Keynote, Google Slides), word processors, vector apps and CMS uploaders all accept PNG without warning, while some of them complain about JPG colour profiles or strip EXIF in unexpected ways.

How this converter works

The browser decodes your JPG into a hidden canvas and re-encodes it as a PNG using canvas.toBlob('image/png'). PNG uses lossless compression, so the pixels in the output are bit-for-bit identical to the pixels the JPG decoder produced. That said: the JPG itself already had lossy compression baked in when it was first created, and converting to PNG cannot undo that. If your source JPG looks blocky, the PNG will be a faithful copy of the blocky pixels — converting to PNG locks in the artefacts but doesn't fix them.

If you tick "Make background transparent", the tool reads every pixel, compares it to the colour you've chosen, and sets pixels within the tolerance distance to fully transparent. This works perfectly for solid backgrounds (e.g. a white-background product photo) and reasonably well for nearly-solid ones; for anti-aliased or shadowed edges, consider the dedicated PNG Transparent Background tool which gives you finer control.

JPG vs. PNG — when each one wins

Use case	Winner	Reason
Photograph for the web	JPG (or WebP)	5–10× smaller than PNG with no visible loss.
Photograph for archival	PNG (or TIFF)	No further compression artefacts when re-edited.
Logo or icon	PNG	Sharp edges + transparency.
Screenshot	PNG	Text and UI lines stay crisp.
Product photo on white	PNG (with transparency)	Drops cleanly onto any background.
Master image to edit again	PNG	Lossless — no degradation per save.

Expected file-size change

The big surprise people get converting JPG to PNG is the file-size jump. A 300 KB JPG photo can become a 2–4 MB PNG. That's because the JPG was throwing away information you couldn't see; the PNG faithfully encodes every remaining pixel, including any compression noise the JPG introduced. For a 1920×1080 photograph, expect the PNG to be roughly 5–15× the JPG's size. This is normal — and a strong reason to stick with JPG (or convert to WebP) when you only need to display the image, not edit it.

PNG comes out smaller than JPG only when the source has lots of solid colour areas or repeating patterns — typically logos, icons, screenshots, charts and pixel art. For those cases, PNG's compression is genuinely better than JPG's.

Tips and best practice

• If you only need a transparent background and nothing else, don't convert to PNG at full resolution — first resize to your display size. A 600×600 PNG with transparency is often smaller than the original full-resolution JPG.
• For knocking out a true white background, raise the tolerance to 25–35; for off-white or slightly textured backgrounds, 40–60. Too high and you'll lose detail inside the subject.
• If your source JPG has heavy compression artefacts (you can see 8×8 pixel blocks in flat areas), converting to PNG won't fix them. Try to source the original PNG, TIFF or RAW file instead.
• Once you have the PNG, run it through the PNG Compressor if file size matters — PNG has a wide quality/size range that the default browser encoder doesn't fully exploit.

When NOT to convert JPG to PNG

• Just for "better quality" — you can't get back quality the JPG already discarded. The PNG will look identical to the JPG, just bigger.
• For a web page hero image — the page will get noticeably slower. Stay with JPG or convert to WebP.
• For email attachments — most mail clients still hate large PNGs. JPG is friendlier.

FAQs

Related tools