Convert JPG to PNG

What this tool does

It decodes your JPG file and re-encodes the pixels as PNG, losslessly. The file is read, converted and offered back as a download without touching the network.

About JPG

JPEG (files end in .jpg or .jpeg — they are the same thing) is the 1992 lossy photo format that every camera, phone and website understands. It throws away detail the eye is bad at seeing, which is why a photo can be 10× smaller than as PNG while looking identical at normal viewing sizes. It is good for photographs and anything photo-like, email attachments, marketplaces and forms that demand .jpg, and situations where compatibility matters more than anything; less good for text, line art, screenshots and logos (the compression smears sharp edges into visible "ringing"), and anything that needs transparency — JPEG has none. Universal, and the safest choice when a form, portal or older program insists on a specific format.

About PNG

PNG is the lossless raster format of the web: every pixel is stored exactly, with an optional alpha channel for transparency. It was designed in 1996 as a patent-free replacement for GIF and is supported by literally everything that shows images. It is good for screenshots, logos, icons, UI graphics, anything with sharp edges, flat colour or text, and anything that needs a transparent background; less good for photographs — a photo saved as PNG is typically 5–10× larger than the same photo as a good-quality JPEG with no visible benefit. Universal: every browser, OS, editor, office suite and messaging app since the late 1990s.

What changes going from JPG to PNG

• Quality: nothing is lost — PNG stores the decoded pixels exactly, including whatever JPG compression artefacts were already there.
• Size: Typically 100 KB–4 MB for a phone photo depending on quality; re-saving a JPEG loses a little more quality each time vs. small for flat graphics, very large for photos (a 12-megapixel photo is 20–30 MB as PNG).
• Metadata: EXIF (camera, date, GPS) is not carried over — the browser decodes pixels, not tags. That is a privacy plus for sharing and a minus if you rely on dates in the file.

A common misconception

Converting a JPEG to PNG does not recover quality — the detail JPEG discarded is gone, and the PNG will simply be a much larger file containing the same pixels, compression artefacts included. The reasons to do it anyway are real but specific: a program that only accepts PNG, a workflow that will edit and re-save the image many times (PNG does not degrade on each save the way JPEG does), or a base image to which you are about to add transparency.

How to convert JPG to PNG

1. Drop the JPG file on the panel above or click to choose it.
2. PNG is pre-selected. Press Convert to PNG.
3. Download. The file is named after the original with a .png extension.