PNG Converter

When to use a PNG converter, and when JPG or WebP fits better

PNG is lossless and supports transparency. It is the right choice for logos, icons, screenshots, diagrams, cut-outs, and any image you are going to edit several times.

For photographs it is usually the wrong one. A 12-megapixel phone photo saved as PNG comes to around 15 MB, while the JPG version looks identical and weighs a small fraction of that. For photos, use the JPG converter. For a website, WebP keeps transparency and is much smaller than PNG; switch the output format to WebP in the tool above.

Converting a JPG to PNG won't make it sharper

A PNG made from a JPG is an exact copy of the JPG as it is now, blocky artefacts included. PNG stops further loss; it cannot restore detail that was removed when the JPG was first saved. That is why the PNG is larger without looking any better.

If the picture is small or soft, enlarging it with the AI image upscaler rebuilds detail, which a format change never does.

How Reduce colors makes a PNG smaller

A normal PNG can hold millions of colors. Reduce colors maps the image onto a palette of 256, 128 or 64 colors, and a palette image compresses far better. Logos, icons, charts and most screenshots use only a handful of colors, so 256 usually looks identical while the file shrinks a lot.

Photos and smooth gradients are different: with fewer colors they show visible bands. Keep those on Lossless, or convert them to JPG instead. The option is lossy, so keep your original file.

Already have a PNG? Drop it in and Compact is picked for you: it re-packs the same pixels more tightly, with nothing lost. If that saves nothing, the original file is handed back as it was.