Guide

JPG vs PNG: Which Format Should You Use?

The two most common image formats are optimized for opposite goals.

JPG: built for photos

JPG uses lossy compression tuned for continuous-tone images - photographs, gradients, skin tones. It has no transparency support and degrades slightly on every re-save. In exchange, photos become 5-20x smaller than their PNG equivalents.

PNG: built for pixels that must survive

PNG is lossless and supports transparency. Screenshots, logos, icons and anything with sharp edges or text stay crisp in PNG, while JPG tends to smear fine text and create ringing artifacts around edges.

The decision rule

• Photo from a camera or phone → JPG (or WebP).
• Screenshot, logo, icon, text-heavy graphic → PNG.
• Need transparency and small size on the web → WebP, which does both.

Neither format is "better" - they solve different problems. The mistake to avoid is storing photos as PNG or shipping logos as JPG.